Re: Breed improvement in dairy cows -Reply

Ignacio Villa (75557.3256@compuserve.com)
15 Nov 96 23:29:10 EST

Bob:

It seems to me that considering the cost of shipping milk, any strategy, be it
nutritional or genetic which increass the proportion of solids in the milk,
makes a lot of sense.

I just visited with a farmer yesterday who is happily going "against the grain,"
that is, feeding his Jersey cows minimal amounts of grain, in order to put more
protein and butterfat in the bulk tank. He told me that the trend is to pay
premiums for solids content in the milk, and he gets a lot more money for his
milk than we are getting. His inputs in this operation are very low, and
consequently his net profits are good.

If water buffaloes do have the qualities that Dan Hemenway says they do (I seem
to remember having read that a lot of Mozarella cheese is made from water
buffalo milk in Italy) Shipping Canadian Holsteins to Pakistan may indeed be a
mistake. Focusing on volume of milk produced alone shows that perhaps there is
lack of clarity as to what are the actual needs that the breeding program needs
to meet.