Milking longer with maize silage
This season's dry conditions have made one thing clear: not having enough feed on hand can bring your season to an early close.
Terrific and Speedway are two of the top four selling bulls of all breeds from LIC's sire catalogue, with more than 48,000 frozen straws already sold for insemination this spring. They will also produce up to 180,000 straws of fresh semen as members of the co-op's Premier Sires Jersey bull teams.
"Terrific and Speedway will make a significant contribution to the dairy industry this year. They are the country's two most balanced daughter proven Jersey sires, and they are in hot demand this mating season," says Malcolm Ellis, bull acquisition manager for LIC.
"Both are comparable to the very best of sires of all breeds. Seldom do you see bulls of any breed rank so highly in the BW stakes and deliver such stellar traits other than production (TOP).
"Everyone keeps telling me they want stature, liveweight, milk, protein, capacity, outstanding udders, and irresistible management traits from their Jersey genetics. Speedway excels in every one of these key criteria, painting a picture that should be hanging in every AB programme this spring. Terrific also has the added advantage of high 98 percent reliability, with 1913 milking daughters in 712 herds."
Ellis says the bulls have been popular with farmers of all breeds this season, as an option for crossbreeding.
"Jersey is a relatively small breed in New Zealand now, so these figures show that it is not just Jersey farms that are attracted to the supremacy of this duo.
"All-round, these guys are a high class double-act and having two Jersey bulls in the top four of Alpha Nominated sales has blown me away."
Ellis says their supremacy can be fully acknowledged when compared to their peers on DairyNZ's Ranking of Active Sires (RAS) list.
Terrific has been so popular, a "sold-out sign" has gone up for frozen semen straws, he said, and the sire is now limited to the Premier Sires brand where the fresh semen service will allow significant usage.
The co-op's Jersey daughter proven team for the spring mating period is made up of eight bulls, from six different sires, with an average 231BW and 99% reliability.
Canterbury dairy farmers Steve and Nina Ireland, from Lynbrook Farm Ltd, have bred a number of top sires for LIC, but Terrific is set to make the biggest contribution than any bulls that have gone before him.
"Having a bull graduate to the Premier Sires team is regarded as a pinnacle in bull breeding – but breeding the number one index and conformation bull with outstanding table manners and daughters built to last in their milking herds is simply the Everest. We've knocked the bugger off!
"We have milked 15 of his daughters here in our mixed 570 cow family farm and we have ordered over 200 Terrific straws for this spring's matings."
