Leading in health and efficiency in US Holstein population

Numbering some nine million cows, about 20% of which are registered in the herdbook, the United States is home to the world's largest population of Holsteins. This makes the USA the cradle of international Holstein breeding. For many years, CRV has also selected genetics for its breeding programme from the premier segment of the American population. Large numbers of embryos harvested from the best bull dams were already being exported to Europe back in the 1980s. This resulted in a series of bulls that were used intensively for breeding. And many of the female animals descended from these imported embryos now form the foundations of leading cow families in Dutch and Flemish breeding circles.

‘CRV has always been an active player in the United States through cooperation with various other parties and since 2009 we have operated our own breeding programmes there’, says Gerbrand van Burgsteden, Senior Breeding Analyst at CRV's product development department. He is responsible for selecting the American CRV bulls, together with his American colleague Joe Stanek.

The bulls from CRV's US breeding programme are housed in North America and are available for the American and international markets. Currently 50 bulls are used each year. In consultation with van Burgsteden, Stanek buys around 75% of these bulls directly from breeders. Some bulls are acquired at bull auctions. ‘We use the genomic breeding values for TPI, production, health and conformation to select the most promising bulls and also base our choices on our indexes for feed efficiency, CRV Health and CRV Efficiency,’ explains van Burgsteden (see text in box). Gil Gar Fumagalli is a fine illustration of a bull acquired from breeders in the current CRV portfolio. He has a breeding value of 2668 GTPI, +1.79 PTAT and +5% CRV Health and +4% CRV Efficiency. He hails from a gilt-edged family that has proven and continues to prove its breeding prowess worldwide. The foundation dam of this family is the EX-91 Ked Juror daughter Ralma Juror Faith.

About a quarter of the bulls in CRV's US genetics portfolio originate from the Peak program which CRV is one the partners. ‘The basis of the Peak programme is the acquisition of young female animals with high genomic breeding values’, explains van Burgsteden. ‘These potential bull dames are used intensively as donors. The result is many thousands of embryos every year. These are used on the recipient cows at the Peak farms and all their calves are given a genomic breeding value. The highest scoring heifers return to the Peak programme while Peak offers the highest ranking bull calves to the other partners in the programme. They divide the most interesting bulls amongst themselves before making the semen of the animals available to the market through their own organisations.

By participating in the Peak programme, CRV also invests in buying the highest ranked donors from American cow families with a long, proven track record in breeding. This enables us to offer farmers a highly competitive US-bull portfolio’, explains van Burgsteden. ‘CRV now enjoys better than ever representation in the upper segment of genomic bulls.', he indicates.

CRV does not restrict its selections in the US to Holsteins alone. A major share of the Jersey bulls in CRV's portfolio are stationed in the United States. And to satisfy the rising demand for semen from beef bulls for the beef on dairy crosses, semen is also available from the very best Angus bulls. In this way, no matter what the breeding goals, CRV can always serve every farmer with a comprehensive bull portfolio to suit their needs.

From the gigantic population of nine million Holstein cows in the United States, CRV annually selects 50 bulls that are available on both the American and international markets. This selection is achieved partly by buying young bulls directly from breeders and partly through participation in the Peak programme.

Part 1: Holstein in Europe
Part 2: Fleckvieh
Part 3: Holstein in United States