There has been strong update of the ICBF’s cow’s own worth (COW) tool this year, which helps farmers to make culling decisions, especially due to the drought.

Based on an analysis of 162,981 dairy cows from the national database, cows ranking in the top 25% on the COW tool yielded 7,174l and 548kg of milk solids on average and calved earlier compared with 6,349l and 470kg milk solids in the bottom 25%.

COW is a performance tool designed to rank dairy females on their expected profit potential for their remaining lifetime. It represents more closely the actual performance of dairy females in the herd due to the combination of not only genetic effects (ie the EBI), but also includes environmental factors (eg calving date, age of the cow and individual effects such as an injury to a cow’s teats) that highly influence the performance of cows within a spring-calving system.

While EBI is designed to make breeding decisions, COW predicts expected profit potential for the lifetime of the cow to inform culling decisions.

Evaluations

Meanwhile, the ICBF is to double the number of evaluations to EBI and Euro-Star figures in a year from three to six. The bimonthly updates will commence in January 2019.