When it comes to breeding the best, LIC shares the pride and joy in your cows. And when we think efficiencies, three characteristics in particular come to mind:
- fertility
- maintenance, and;
- production.
In general, farmers want to see cows in-calf sooner, while maintaining good production and holding onto body condition.
At the same time, there’s a need to gain more from feed inputs, with more milk solids per unit of liveweight.
And what better way to achieve these efficiencies than with a great KiwiCross team?
This year LIC boasts an awesome array of KiwiCross bulls in its Forward Pack team. There’s no need to trade-off A2/A2 over genomic Breeding Worth (gBW), as LIC has merged the two teams with no compromise on the gBW front, giving us the simplest solution possible and providing peace-of-mind into the future.
519011 SANDERS ACCOLADE (pictured above)
The KiwiCross team is highlighted by some outstanding young bulls, including 519011 SANDERS ACCOLADE (324 gBW), sired by Snapper (who will himself feature in the Daughter Proven team), and is out of a magnificent Solaris cow.
Also high on the BW agenda is 518072 DEANS PROFESSIONAL (g360 BW), again sired by a high ranking Jersey bull Besiege and out of a high-producing Esteem cow.
In the mix this year are bulls with great udder genomic breeding values (gBVs), coming from cow lines that pride themselves on exceptional udders from dam-to-dam.
518015 SMITHS HERALD’s 7 year old dam (pictured above)
The likes of 518015 SMITHS HERALD, sired by Bounty, just add to that udder confidence. Also adding value and doing extremely well to maintain the high udder gBVs are 518076 GREENWELL BLACKHAWK and 518069 TOTARA VIEW NAVIGATOR, meaning we can expect a real treat in 2020.
When it comes to the all-important fertility trait, two bulls contribute nicely to the impressive 3.2 average gBV of the team: 519062 ARKANS BARRIER (6.5 Fertility gBV) is sired by the outstanding young bull Arkans Patriarch-ET and is out of a Kamahi King cow coming from the renowned Arkan’s B Family, a family proven on fertility with an awesome udder.
518038 WERDERS PREMONITION (pictured above)
Joining him is 518038 WERDERS PREMONITION, sired by the well known Priests Sierra, not only impressive on fertility (4.0) but also excelling on udder (0.83) and dairy conformation (0.72) gBVs.
The Forward Pack is about the best-of-the-best, so it’s no surprise to see the team will be influenced by some outstanding daughter proven bulls in 516066 WALTON INFERNO (302 gBW) and 516074 CROSSANS CRITICAL-ET, who are proving to be two of the great all round, industry-leading bulls.
Add some real quality in the likes of 511011 PRIESTS SIERRA and 514017 GLEN KORU BECKON, and it’s little wonder that confidence rides high when it comes to this team.
2020 is shaping up to be one of excellent potential given the quality of the young sires soon to graduate.
517026 HOWSES SPRINGFIELD (pictured above)
In these ranks of young sires (and adding to the finishing touches to this elite team) is 517026 HOWSES SPRINGFIELD.
Springfield is sired by Drysdale Sovereign and is out of a cow with wonderful udder attachment and soundness; she’s high on index which reflects her worth in the herd.
Springfield himself also has four sons in the mix and offers sizable capacity, strong udder support, and stunning fertility.
Another one to look out for is 517043 GLEN KORU PROCLAIMERET (326 gBW), out of the amazing Nevron Showman Cow, FLO, who is just pumping with production. Proclaimer is a nice tidy all round bull with 11 sons in the pipeline.
517042 LUCK-AT-LAST INSPIRED-ET, a Beamer son with spectacular udder (0.80). His dairy conformation (0.63) gBVs also look very promising. Together with top-class milksolids he’s bound to shine, with his hard-working dam sired by Terrific.
With all the above on offer from the KiwiCross Forward Pack team it’s a group of bulls truly worth considering when making your artificial breeding decisions this year.
