The sale was Shrimpton’s Hill Herefords, the leading herd in Australasia for short gestation genetics, a claim acknowledged by LIC bull acquisition manager Malcolm Ellis.
“When we went looking for short gestation beef genetics we found they’re all in one place, here!” he told the audience as an introduction to the sale.
The shortest gestation length(GL) breeding value of the bulls offered at the sale was -7.5 days, indicating the calves it sires will, on average, drop just under three days earlier than the breed average.
Across 25 cows, producing 1.5kgMS/day at $8.50/kgMS, that’s worth nearly $1000 in extra milk. And the earlier the cow is calved, the more likely she is to get in calf in good time the following year.
While the -7.5 GL bull didn’t make the top sale on the day, one very close to it – at -6.9 – did, going for $3600 to a dairy farm at Coldstream, Mid Canterbury.
That bull also had a very low birthweight score, at 0.9, indicating extreme ease of calving. This is another key trait for the dairy sector that Shrimpton’s Hill owners, John and Liz McKerchar, have been targeting for over a decade.
“It was a very good sale,” John told Rural News after the sale. “There was a definite premium paid for the better the bulls were for short gestation.”
All but one of the 146 bulls offered sold and the average, at $2332, was $350 above last year’s.
McKerchar acknowledges that because they’re selecting for easy calving and short gestation, the bulls’ growth rate EBVs aren’t as high as some in the breed. However, they are mostly breed average or slightly better and in chasing calving ease and gestation length, they’ve been careful to not completely ignore other traits.
More on short gestation length genetics in next week’s Dairy News.
