Crossing over to success

And with an influx of European and Kiwi genetics, New Zealand expatriate and Allendale East, South Australia, dairyfarmer Mike Green might just be on his way to getting there.

Mike farms with his father Ken who bought the 165-hectare Waikato Farm – named because Waikato is where they hail from in New Zealand – in 2001 and with it a herd of 600 Holsteins largely based on North American genetics.

As Mike recalls, things back then were looking a bit shabby.

“Coming from New Zealand, we had only ever dealt with New Zealand Friesians,” he said.

“We were impressed with the litreage of the traditional Holsteins, but very unimpressed with how soft they were.

“They were always lame, hard to get in-calf and when they did they had trouble calving, and they had very high somatic cell counts which meant a high instance of mastitis.”

Disgruntled with the performance of the herd, Mike and Ken started using NZ Friesian semen from LIC, based in their homeland.

Now they do not use any traditional Holstein semen at all.

“The NZ Friesian is a smaller, rounder and more grass-orientated animal,” Mike said.

“Because New Zealand farmers run a very low-input system – 70% of the country don’t feed any grain – they’re very good, aggressive grazers of feed.

“They tend to have lower litreage than traditional Holsteins but have much higher milk solids, which is what we get paid for.”

They started crossbreeding with Jerseys, artificially inseminating Holstein heifers, but after a while they grew tired of that because of the difference in size.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg, because a trip overseas in 2004 opened-up a whole new world for Mike.

“I went on a tour to Sweden in 2004 and was really impressed by the Swedish Red cattle,” he said.

“So that same year we started crossbreeding with Swedish Red genetics.”

The Greens’ breeding program was simple – Holsteins get mated to Holsteins and the red herd mated to red semen.

But another trip overseas changed things again, this time to the United States in 2006 where Mike saw trials in large commercial herds mating cattle to Montbeliardes.

Now they mate their 150-head of Swedish Red-Holstein crosses to French Montbeliarde, which has produced some outstanding results.

They currently milk about 50 of the three-way cross cows as first calvers, but Mike says their best cow is actually a four-way cross.

“She is a Montbeliarde- Swedish Red-NZ Friesian-Brown Swiss cross,” he said.

“Last year in her second lactation she produced 11,174 litres of milk in 302 days, producing 404 kilograms of fat and 405kg of protein.

“If all the Montbeliardes were like this we’d be laughing – we’d be rich!”

Even though they are such large producers, Mike says the cattle are no hassle at all, describing them as “the cows you never see”.

“That’s the kind of herd you want,” he said.

In 2008, the Greens bought-in a 300-cow pure Swedish Red herd from John and Monica Williams, Bosgowan, Meningie, SA, which had 60 years of proven red genetics behind it.

Last year the 760-head herd averaged just under 10,000 litres a cow with about 690kg milk solids.

“Our herd nutritionist Tom Thorne from Total Result Ag Consulting has said a few times there are a lot of herds producing more litres than ours but very few, if any, are producing more milk solids,” Mike said.

“Within the 300-cow Waikato Farm Aussie Red stud we now have eight cows classified Excellent.

“Some of the real bonuses of the Aussie Reds are their feet and legs and calving ease – no more night shifts pulling calves is great.”

Mike says they are also great producers of milk solids.

Since their milk was of such good quality, they received a $45,000 bonus from their then processor Dairy Farmers Milk Cooperative for staying in premium grade all year, that being below 200,000 in the bulk milk cell count.

But with DFMC no longer picking up milk from farmers in the Lower South East, the Greens have now switched to Warrnambool Cheese & Butter and, like many of their dairyfarming counterparts, are feeling the strain of a low milk price.

To cut costs, Mike does all of the AI work himself because he previously worked for LIC in NZ.

“We calve twice a year, the first from late August until late October, which is when the majority of the herd calves, and then we have another 150 or 170 cows which are mated to home-grown red bulls calve in summer,” Mike said.

Another reason why the Greens pursue the path of crossbreeding is because of the hybrid vigour bonus, one of the benefits of that being better fertility.

“Last year we got 90% of our spring-mating herd in calf in 10 weeks,” Mike said.

Hybrid vigour was part of the original reason the Greens started to crossbreed.

“We had a herd nutritionist called Bruce Hamilton who said we could get a 2% to 3% hybrid vigour increase by crossing the NZ Holsteins over the traditional Holstein herd we had here,” he said.

“So we went that way and have carried it on ever since, and every year our best first calvers do the herd average in milk solids.”