Araluen Park principals Trevor Saunders and Anthea Day who won many of the classes, including champion cow, in the recent Central Gippsland Jersey Breeders Club’s on-farm challenge, will attend International Dairy Week to network with their embryo and semen suppliers and feed companies.
Anthea will also be attending in her recently elected role as president of the Ayrshire breed.
Seven per cent of the Araluen Park herd are Ayrshires.
Araluen Park, at Shady Creek in south-eastern Victoria, is classified the top BPI and Sustainability Index Ayrshire herd in Australia.
The remaining Araluen Park herd are Jersey cows.
“The Ayrshire committee holds a function at IDW, where we have presentations to winners of competitions held throughout the year,” Anthea said.
“These include our on-farm challenges, our cow of the year and champion of champion presentations.”
With IDW bringing overseas companies to Australia, Anthea and Trevor use the week as an opportunity to plan for their business.
They have a number of United States cow families and bull genetics in their herd.
“Being a part of the Jersey stud sector fraternity, you have a lot of mates around the world,” Anthea said.
“We’re really pleased with the classification of Niklaus when the American proofs came out recently.
“We have 51 Niklaus calves on the ground, and a lot of cows short-bred to him.
“And Kamikaze is standing again in service. We’re really pleased by that.”
Anthea and Trevor have used IDW to identify sires and families of cows from overseas that they want to breed into their herd.
They have the number one BPI Jersey cow in two-year-old Araluen Jiggy Sandra 86, and their herd is classified number eight in Australia.
“We had 100 daughters of Jeronimo here before he went number one,” Anthea said.
“We’re pretty excited about Niklaus and what he’s bringing into our herd.
“A fair proportion of our herd is genetically recovering cow families.”
“We have Mary Sue’s here and a lot of American families that are generational,” Trevor said.
“We wanted animals in our herd that were very good producers.
“The idea to invest in the Molly’s came from Anthea because she had studied the mother. She was 95 points.
“The Mollys are becoming a dominant family in the herd, because they’re a highly fertile family.”
Anthea and Trevor are using sexed semen to accelerate their genetic progress and gain daughters for their herd.
“It’s also given us extra animals to sell, and the opportunity to sell lines of heifers into other Australian states and Pakistan,” Trevor said.
Araluen Park Vanahlem Olive, bred and owned by Trevor Saunders and Anthea Day, of Araluen Park, took out champion cow at the recent Central Gippsland Jersey Breeders Club’s on-farm challenge.
Vanahlem Olive was in the winning highest pointed team class, dam and daughter class and pen of five class, and won the nine-years-and-over class.
She’s standing in December in the Great Southern Challenge, competing against one of her daughters, now owned by Roger Heath.
“Her dam is still in the herd, and she’s 14, and we’ve flushed her again to Vanahlem,” Anthea said.
“We’re hopeful of getting another Vanahlem Olive string of calves.
“We have 16 cows in our herd directly related to Olive, and one has bred a 94 points daughter.
“Olive is classified 95 points – she’s the first EX95 cow we’ve bred.
“She’s like a tank, she has a beautiful udder. She’s one of a few once-in-a-life-time cows we’ve bred.
“We’re also proud of how she has bred on. She has a Niklaus granddaughter, classified number 13 on the Australian genomic heifer list.”
Araluen Park Jeronimo Molly won the five-year-old class, among 23 entries, in the CGJBC on-farm challenge.
“She has the most amazing udder,” Anthea said.
“If you were thinking the perfect udder, that’s what she has.
“She’s a favourite cow in our herd. She went 93 max last year as a four-year-old.
“The Molly family are also very fertile in our herd and seem to get in-calf to sexed semen very easily.”
Araluen Park were on the podium with first and second in the three-year-old class in the CGJBC on-farm challenge – with Araluen Park Jeronimo Carmel first, and Araluen Park Valentino Posh 3 second.