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A herd that converts feed efficiently into milk, fat and protein. All over the world, this is an essential condition to ensure the profitability of dairy farming, especially in times of high prices for milk and feed. CRV bulls enable you to breed cows that achieve high lifetime production efficiently and effortlessly, under all circumstances. The December index 2021 demonstrates this once again.

After lengthy preparations, last week the first 'methane sniffer' was installed in the milk robot at a Dutch farm. This sniffer establishes the methane concentration in the air exhaled by each cow at each milking session.

The age of cows on Dutch dairy farms was higher again last year. The average milk production per lactation barely increased, but the increased longevity resulted in higher than ever lifetime production. This has been revealed by the annual milk recording statistics of CRV for the 2020-2021 financial year.

The cooperative organisations Royal Agrifirm Group and CRV will start up a joint project designed to measure the methane emission of individual cows in actual practice. The purpose is to gain greater insight into the differences between animals and rations. This knowledge will be used to develop new products that enable livestock farmers to control methane emissions. The researchers will focus on various aspects, such as feed advice, methane efficiency breeding values and improved methods for estimating methane emissions at the cow and farm level.

The August 2021 index run shows the strength of CRV's breeding program when it comes farmers' wishes. Once again, this run shows a large number of top bulls that carry the polled gene. What's more, farmers who want to breed fast for component-rich milk and efficient and trouble-free producing dairy cows have even more choice. Bulls that were frontrunners for health and efficiency as a genomic bull confirm this with the performance of their daughters in this run.

The August index run shows the strength of CRV's Fleckvieh breeding programme. Established daughter-proven bulls such as Wobbler and Haribo are maintaining their figures nicely, as are widely used genomic bulls such as Wüstensohn, Warlock, Wanko, and Virginia. In addition, a number of young daughter-proven bulls are improving their breeding values as more daughter information becomes available.