When it comes to breeding dairy cows, Stuart and Jacqui Tracy focus on health and profit.
The dairy farmers from Waratah Bay, in Victoria’s Gippsland region, believe these breeding objectives are at the heart of sustainable farming and assist in their overall goals to improve their farm for the next generation and reduce their carbon footprint.
So, when the couple found out that many of their “no-fuss” and “fertile” cows and heifers are daughters of some of the highest ranked sires on the new Australian Sustainability Index, they weren’t surprised.
One of these high SI sires is DG Charley.
Charley is also the maternal grand sire of Australia’s number 18 Australian Breeding Value genomic Holstein female, bred by Stuart and Jacqui.
“When we first decided to use Charley it was because he was a high indexing bull internationally and had the positive fertility and health traits we were looking for,” Stuart said.
“He also didn’t have any major flaws through his type profile and was moderately sized.
“Now we have many of his daughters on their third calf, they continue to get in calf and have been testing quite high on our herd’s genomic index.”
The Tracys also have heifers sired by other high ranking SI sires such as Knowhow, Spock, Hamlet, Seville and the Charley sons Howler and Durable.
Polled Holstein sire TTM Ellis PP is also prominent in their breeding program, as Stuart and Jacqui concentrate on addressing potential animal welfare challenges through genetics.
“A bull like Ellis PP, there’s no question that he’s one of the best bulls on the market — polled or not,” Stuart said.
“When you have bulls with an index like that, it’s a pretty simple choice.”
Milking a herd of 700, including Holsteins and three-way-cross cows, Stuart and Jacqui run a family operation including children Carmen, Leila and Angus — with Angus working in the business alongside his parents.
In recent years, the family has used many ABS high genomic and proven sires to further their health and sustainability breeding goals.
One of these has been top Holstein proven sire Jeronimo P.
“His [Jeronimo P’s] daughters are travelling well — they come into the dairy well and are very quiet, easy to manage and we have more Jeronimo P calves this year,” Stuart said.
“We initially chose to use him because he was a high-index young genomic sire with strong health traits.
“The fact he is still at the top, it is good to see we made the right choices using him in our breeding program.”
Among their crossbred herd, top ABS Red sire Onstad P proved his fertility by siring nearly 22 per cent of the autumn-born heifers, while popular Jersey sire Gelbeado Park Woodside has been used in the crossbred heifer breeding program this year.
The Tracys use genomics and Australian Breeding Values to rank their herd according to the Health Weighted Index (HWI) and the bottom 30 per cent are joined to ABS Beef InFocus to reduce bobby calves and diversify their income.
“There’s certainly demand for first-cross beef out of dairy cattle at the moment,” Stuart said.
“There’s a margin to be gained by using beef and rearing them.”