To me this is an area where the Illawarra Society needs to get involved. An ongoing program giving structure to boost use of ET on top cows is needed. It doesn’t have to be complicated. If for instance 15 or 20 breeders would put up say $500 each to get into an embryo balloting program, you could then go out and flush 6 or 8 of the top cows in the breed to the best bulls and distribute the embryos between them. The owners of the cows could be paid with access to other embryos. This would spread the top cow families around a lot more herds, would produce a lot more calves from the top cows that are currently receiving few opportunities, and would generate more bull calves that may potentially be available for young sire sampling.

Having extra genetic linkages between your herds may even help the accuracy of proofs. I think you would find that many of the owners of the top cows would have enough pride in their cow that they would want to see it flushed and have the chance to have progeny perform in other herds. That’s the real proof of weather you have a superior cow is if it’s progeny will perform in other herds under different management. But the program would need to be structured. There is simply not enough marketing of embryos within the breed to justify breeders doing the flushes of their own accord.

It’s important for a breed society to move forward and use the best possible programs if the breed is to be competitive. An example would be the all-breed classification program that has been developed by Holstein Canada. They have put in a huge amount of money to develop a state-of-the-art program, using measurements for as many traits as possible, and relying on the program to calculate a final score. Each breed can simply fine-tune the numbers to customize it to their breed. It is now used by all the dairy breeds in Canada. Small breed associations can’t spend that sort of money on developing a program.

It’s a case of why waste money trying to re-invent the wheel? The Holstein Association in Australia uses that program. Canada now has all breeds classified with the system, meaning all breeders now get classification visits at regular intervals, and of course the data flow or technical support issues are taken care of. I would like complement your Illawarra Association on its initiatives in the area of young sire proving where you are now working with some organizations that have major international marketing networks. These major AI organizations know that developing markets in some tropical and sub-tropical regions will require a product other than just Holsteins.

A few months ago I completed a request from Semex for an article introducing the Illawarra breed, which was to be used by their sales network in South America. They see your Illawarra breed as having potential for marketing into some of these developing countries, areas where they wish to build a market. If they could get even a modest market for Illawarra semen, it would certainly lead to greater interest from the AI industry in helping you develop the breed. I would certainly recommend that you continue to work with them and do what-ever you can to help them develop that market for you. I should just add a few comments on what I would see as the best sources of red Holstein genes. The way to access the highest quality Holstein blood is to use red factor bulls to breed red Illawarra sons.