The Jersey breed has seen rapid growth and genetic improvement over the past couple of decades.  The breed known for higher fertility, above-average component percentages, and increased longevity always has progressive owners looking ahead for the next edge in genetic improvement. With many dairy producers adopting partial or whole herd genomic testing, the industry has seen new technological advancements as part of this need for data interaction.

One company, Zoetis, has recently launched a platform that looks directly at wellness traits effecting longevity and productivity of Jersey cattle. The traits evaluated for cows include:  Mastitis, Lameness, Metritis, Retained Placenta, Displaced Abomasum, Ketosis, and Milk Fever.  Zoetis also considers calf wellness, divided between Calf Livability, Calf Respiratory, and Calf Scours.  To learn more about the specifics, please read the article below.

<<<WELLNESS IS A PROFITABLE CHOICE FOR JERSEYS

As an industry, we have grown very accustomed to using indexes for sorting and ranking animals in order to take a comprehensive approach to total animal improvement. Much like the Jersey breed association creates and edits the Jersey Performance Index (JPI), Zoetis specifically looks at the data effecting the Jersey cow and calf in order to economically weigh their overall DWP$ index. This index includes their wellness traits, along with the production and health traits we are familiar with using in JPI, CM$, and NM$. Zoetis breaks down their approach to Jersey specific Dairy Wellness Profit Dollars (DWP$) in the article below.

<<<CLARIFIDE® PLUS FOR JERSEY INDEXES PROVIDE POWERFUL SELECTION TOOLS

Select Sires was an early adopter of Zoetis’ Dairy Wellness traits in the Holstein breed and plans to do the same with Jerseys. Many of our All West/Select Sires customers use Zoetis as their genomic testing source and we believe we need to provide cutting edge information to our clientele that supports their investments. As such, Select Sires has begun testing active Jersey bulls for Zoetis Wellness traits to provide to dairy producers who are looking to take advantage of these traits.

Here is a list of our Top 10 Jersey bulls that are available today.

ID Name JPI CM$ DWP$ WT$ CW$
7JE1722 JX DASHIELL {6} 195 689 886 96 50
7JE1528 DISCO 177 583 849 142 75
14JE1751 JX RUGER {4} 187 636 801 104 14
7JE1733 JX WHIRLAWAY {3} 603 791 56 85
14JE1734 JX CASTIRON {3} 565 786 106 78
7JE1715 JX JAYLEN {4} 176 618 772 39 82
14JE1675 IROQUOIS-P 163 572 762 111 54
7JE1694 JX METAL {5} 173 553 750 138 26
14JE1736 JX HIDALGO {5} 187 624 744 26 76
7JE1724 JX BENELLI {6} 167 543 744 99 54

As a Jersey specialist for All West/Select Sires, I am privileged to work with multiple Jersey breeders. In doing so, I’ve been able to gather some general benchmarks for this overall index ranking. Most breeders always want to know, “Where does my heifer rank?” After evaluating multiple herds, I’ve found that it is rare to currently find Jerseys over 800 DWP$. These animals would be considered breed-leading or elite. Also quite elite is the 750-800 DWP$ range, but slightly more common among each herd sampled. 700+ DWP$ would still be considered very nice in rank, while 650-700 DWP$ seems to be above average.

If you have questions on this subject, please feel free to reach out to myself or your local All West/Select Sires Representative and stay tuned for more information to come as we approach the August 2019 sire summary!

Bookmark and Share