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News
01 Aug 2003
SRB Collins Royal Hugo is, without dispute, one of the leading Holstein-Friesian artificial breeding sires in the world being the youngest to achieve more than 1 million inseminations.
The question, will he be cloned, was put to Livestock Improvement’s Genetics General Manager, Peter Gatley.
“No. We are more interested in the sons of Hugo, than a copy of Hugo. As excellent as he is, his sons will be better. That’s genetic gain.
“Livestock Improvement has one of the biggest sire proving schemes in the world. Each year we identify the top cows in the country, from a population of over 3 million, and mate them to elite bulls. Bull calves are selected from the resulting offspring, and 300 of them are progeny tested. This involves the production of about 80 daughters from each bull, and when these 24,000 cows start producing milk, we measure their performance. Their database records enable us to identify the bulls which are passing on the most profitable genes.
“This process takes several years and costs $30,000 for each bull, so the total is $9 million per annum or about 25% of our revenue. This is a substantial investment, but the net value of genetic gain to New Zealand dairy farmers is over $30 million each year.
“An example of how our sires are improving can be found in our record breaking bulls. Several years ago we celebrated two of our Holstein Friesian bulls, SRD Dawsons Belvedere and Kingsmill PA Walesa achieving 1 million inseminations. These bulls were head and shoulders above their contemporaries, but their Breeding Worth indexes are around 120 compared to Hugo at 218”
“All cloning would give us is more semen. Our semen technology already enables us to get hundreds of thousands of straws from each of the top bulls, so semen supply is not much of a problem.
“At far as biotechnology is concerned we see more benefit in gene discovery than cloning. Understanding the bovine genome will enable greater precision in breeding decisions and will lift the rate of genetic gain,” Peter Gatley said.
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