However, it certainly remains to be seen if crossbreeding is just a passing fad or if it will become a long-term industry practice. I see it as a window of opportunity for other breeds to gain market share, and the various breed comparisons have certainly made commercial producers aware that while the Holstein has a long lead on production, it does not have such a large lead when it comes to efficiency or even profitability.

Which ever way the crossbreeding scenario plays out, I don’t see international countries looking to an Illawarra breed that samples 5 to 10 bulls per year as a major source of outcross genetics. To me the goal of producing a cow that can improve the genetics of the much larger population in the tropics is a much more viable long-term objective. To take a somewhat different path to some of the other red breeds may ultimately have advantages.

Why does the number of bulls sampled matter so much? Well every animal receives two sets of genes, one from the dam and one from the sire. Any group of progeny can be mapped on a bell-curve, with most located near the centre, an average of the two parents, but with a few outliers – one that was lucky enough to get only good genes from each parent, and of course one at the other end that got only poor genes. Almost all the truly great animals that drive genetic progress were lucky enough to be a long way above their parent average. Scientists use the term Mendelian sampling to cover this lucky inheritance. A skillful breeder can make mating decisions that produce animals that have the right balance of traits, but no-one has control over which mating will produce the lucky animal that gets only the best genes of both parents. That’s why bulls go through a progeny test program so as to identify the lucky ones.

In general terms, about one in ten bulls sampled should be good enough to continue use, but only about one in a hundred will be way above parent average and have a truly exceptional proof that should make him a sire of sons. That’s why over the past 10 or 15 years the bulls Prince and now perhaps Monarch have been the only bulls the breed has produced that really deserve significant use as sires of sons. You simply don’t sample enough bulls to find those exceptional ones very often. However, with your open herd-book policy, you have the opportunity to use sires of sons from other populations, populations that are large enough to be making competitive genetic gains.

Judging from yesterday's show, the Illawarra breed has certainly come a long way over the last 20 years or so, by using an infusion of outside blood. The improvement in udders, the consistency and depth of the classes was most impressive. Over recent years many international judges attending DairyWeek have returned to North America raving about the quality of the Illawarra display.

But the improvement does go much further than just the appearance of the cattle. If we look to your national breed production averages over the years you will see that the only breed to have greater production gains than the Illawarra has been the Brown Swiss, a breed that is still getting established in Australia.

Most notably the Illawarra is somewhat ahead of the Aussie Red, the other red breed built on an Illawarra base but focusing more on European red breed bloodlines. However, the Aussie Red does have slightly better fat and protein percentages. The column I want you to look at is the lactation length, which for our purposes we can use as an indicator of cow fertility. It is certainly not a surprise that the Holstein, with its widely publicised poor reproductive performance, has one of the longest lactation lengths.