29 Jan 2018
Roger Evans discusses what many dairy farmers have been thinking in the past few years – that cows are getting taller, and thus potentially impacting on herd welfare.
"This rise in stature has important implications, but at its very worst, it has welfare implications, simply because cows become too big for the environment they are expected to live in."
I am not sure I can put a date on this – it has got to be 20 to 30 years or so – but realisation has been growing among commercial dairy farmers that pedigree Holstein cattle are getting too tall.
The majority of commercial dairy farmers have used Holstein semen on their cows and, as most semen comes from pedigree Holsteins, commercial cattle have been getting taller as well. This rise in stature has important implications, but at its very worst, it has welfare implications, simply because cows become too big for the environment they are expected to live in.
Ironically, breeders have sought to enhance other attractive traits that increased height as a sort of bi-product. It has been a desirable trait to have udder height above the hocks, which is more easily achieved in taller cows. It is silky, fine udders that pedigree animal classifiers look for, which are found in taller animals.
A lot of dairy farmers seek to use sexed semen in an attempt to cut down on the bull calves no one really wants. Sexed semen works best on heifers, so it is obvious you need an easy calving bull to use on those heifers. Easy calving sires are, of necessity, less robust in conformation and I have always thought breeding heifers to sexed semen inadvertently introduced a narrowness – dare I say a frailty – in to Holstein conformation.
At a period in my life, I spent a lot of time on stands at agricultural shows. I used to make an effort to get on the stand first, and I was so good at it I would often be on my own, so I would get a cup of coffee and go to watch the dairy cattle being led out for judging.
Most of the days on the stand would be spent talking to dairy farmers and, at that time, most of the conversations would inevitably be about milk price. However, after that topic was exhausted, the next most popular discussion was unsuitability of the black and white cattle they were breeding. In particular, they were too tall, too frail (as opposed to robust) and all this was manifested, in simple terms, as cows that were too big for the cubicles they were expected to lie in.
With that scenario in mind, I am leaning on a rail, watching these cows being led around the ring. If the handler was on the other side of the animal to me, the cow would be so tall I couldn’t see the handler’s head above the cow’s withers. I used to watch all this going on and turn away to return to the stand and think “they just don’t get it, do they?”
In particular, I remember one cow. She was a tremendous cow, all the right traits in all the right places, and she was undefeated at major shows for three or four years running. But she was a huge cow; I don’t think she would ever have been in a cubicle. I think she probably lived her life in a loose box on her own. I saw her a lot over the years and often thought if you turned her in with my cows for the night what state would she be in the following morning? She would have to spend the night fighting every cow, because that is what cows do to establish a pecking order. If she wanted to lie down, there wouldn’t be a cubicle big enough for her; she would have to lie on bare concrete in the slurry. In fact, I would not have been at all surprised if she had not survived the night.
The irony is (there’s always an irony), over subsequent years I’ve met a lot of dairy farmers who were using sons of that cow, extensively, on their herds. It defies belief; why use the breeding of a cow to breed your own herd that is probably expected to live in a conventional cubicle house that particular cow could not itself live in?
It is probably 15 to 20 years late – but better late than never. The Holstein breed society has finally addressed the situation. All bulls used in AI have what they call a “type merit”. I don’t intend to go in to any detail on this – you are probably not that interested and I don’t get to choose bulls anymore, so I’m not that up to date. But it is a fact, in the past, bulls with the highest type merit almost always transmitted higher stature, taller cows.
To address concerns about tall cows and their practicality, the society has reviewed its type merit criteria and introduced a small negative for bulls that increase stature. Using these bulls will not necessarily reduce the size of your cows, but it might stop them getting taller.
To make them smaller you have to do something more dramatic, such as using a British Friesian bull. These will breed you a smaller, more compact animal that will thrive without the cosseting some of the more extreme Holsteins need. If you want to do something more dramatic, you can turn to cross-breeding. A lot of dairy farmers have done this, including us, and I suspect it was extreme Holsteins that drove many farmers down that particular route.
These days we use mostly British Friesian semen, having cross-bred our cows for many years. Once you have embraced the idea you are not too bothered what colour your cows are and what they may look like, life becomes a whole lot easier, if only because you end up with a smaller cow that can thrive as a competitive grazer and within the housing environment you expect her to thrive in.
The best cows I have ever bred were the first crosses I had when I first put Holstein bulls on pure British Friesians. Like most people I continued using Holsteins – with hindsight I should have alternated Holsteins with British Friesians.
I know of farmers who have quite happily put up new cubicle sheds that would better accommodate the larger cows they had bred. I’ve always found it easier and a lot cheaper to breed the cow to fit the shed, rather than the other way around.
This hasn’t been a discussion about breeding dairy cows. Hopefully, it’s been about dairy cow welfare.
