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Prepare for smaller, more productive herds

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Dairy farmers worldwide are being urged to prepare now for a future with a smaller herd of higher producing cows, says the general manager of World Wide Sires New Zealand, Hank Lina.

For this, farmers would need dairy sires superior to their contemporaries of even a year ago, he says.

“In the US and around the world, farmers are recognising that genomic sires are light-years ahead of daughter proven sires because they have been selected for the traits farmers need today, and tomorrow – not yesterday,” he says.

Demand for genomically proven bulls in the US is now greater than for daughter proven.

“That’s not surprising,” says Lina.

World Wide Sires began genomically proving bulls in 2009 based on a population base of at least 1 million genotyped animals.

“The size and depth of that dataset provides a very high level of accuracy in genomic prediction – and that has led to the confidence we are now seeing amongst American farmers,” Lina says.

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