Paying close attention to breeding advice has helped a Croatian dairy farm boost its milk quality and production to claim the title of top herd in the country.
Since its inception 18 years ago, the brand-new dairy farm at Marijanci in the Slavonia region, near the border with Hungary, has grown rapidly by keeping pace with new technology and genetics.
The herd has expanded to 450 cows, a number the farm is quite content with. The focus now is on breeding for high-quality milk.
“The goal is to achieve a balanced cow with the highest possible Nordic Total Merit Index.”
The farm’s manager, Berislav Vulic, who is also a veterinarian, explains how the farm was started and what plans it has for the future.
“Back in 2004, the owner, Josip Dukmenic, made the decision that the company would start milk production with 1,130 hectares of land.
“Without any experience, a milking parlour with a main barn was built and 330 Holstein Friesian pregnant heifers were imported from the Netherlands.
“Today we have 450 Holstein cows plus an additional 450 heifers and calves as followers. On a number of occasions, we have even had surplus heifers to sell.”
The cows are milked twice per day and yield 35 litres each. Over the years the herd has progressed so well that last year it finished as the best farm in Croatia in terms of production, with 10,795 kgs average yield at 4.6% butterfat and 3.5% protein.
The main milking herd is split into two groups, high and low production, and these are housed separately to be fed different rations.
“The first-lactation cows are always separated from the older cows,” explains Berislav. “Each group has an external exercise area and the dry cows and heifers have access to grazing areas, but due to the recent drought periods they have actually all been receiving a full TMR ration.”
With sound advice from VikingGenetics, Berislav has a set breeding strategy and it has proven quite successful.
“We inseminate heifers and first-lactation cows with VikingHolstein X-Vik sexed semen for the first two or three inseminations. On the older cows, we use Belgian Blue semen.
“The goal is to achieve a balanced cow with the highest possible Nordic Total Merit Index (NTM). When selecting bulls, I use the application on vikinggenetics.com and the mating program Vikmate, so along with bulls VH Comply and VH Nader, we also use VH Seo PRC in the mix, even though it does not have a high NTM.”
Since switching to VikingGenetics, Berislav says the herd’s milk composition has improved, along with some unexpected health benefits.
“Since using VikingGenetics, we have improved our butterfat composition during the last three years by 0.3%. An additional benefit we have experienced is that we have reduced the culling rate of cows from 40% to under 30%.”
“Since using VikingGenetics, we have improved our butterfat composition by 0.3%. An additional benefit we have experienced is that we have reduced the culling rate.”
