Having cows that are easy to milk and handle is one of those things that makes work at a dairy farm easier. Using the workability traits in the Nordic Total Merit Index (NTM), like Milkability and Temperament, you can measure how easy it is to milk and handle your cows.
Milkability
Milkability index describes the bull’s daughters’ genetic potential for milking speed (expressed as the flow of fat + protein). The higher the breeding value, the faster the milking speed. We also have breeding value for leakage (how easily bull’s daughters leak between milkings). The higher the breeding value, the less the leakage.
In NTM, milkability has a relative weight of 3% for VikingHolstein and VikingJersey and 4% for VikingRed. Registrations for milkability are collected by farmers and are based on herd owners’ assessments of cows’ milkability compared to other cows in the same herd on a scale of 1-5.
Besides that, information from electronic milk recordings from AMS and milking parlours is included, measured as grams of fat + protein per minute (if available, this is used instead of the herd owners’ assessment).
Daughters of the VikingHolstein bull with EBV 120 would milk 29 grams of fat + protein per minute more than daughters of the bull with EBV 100, which is a 15% improvement.
