Heading for Denmark courtesy of Ai Services and Viking Genetics

The visit will be hosted by Viking Genetics and Ai Services (Northern Ireland) Ltd.

Scott milks 300 cows with his father at Cross on the outskirts of Londonderry City. The herd, which is predominantly autumn calving is currently averaging 8,500L at 4.4% butterfat and 3.4% protein.

The upcoming trip to Denmark follows-on from Scott’s name being drawn out of the hat, courtesy of a free prize draw that was organised on the Ai Services’ stand at the recent 2022 Royal Ulster Winter Dairy Fair.

Viking Genetics is unique in having focused on a number of key health traits courtesy of bespoke national breeding programmes that have been in operation the past four decades.

Significantly, all the animal performance-related results generated during this period have been retained in full and are available on the same data base.

The visit to Denmark will be of specific interest to Scott. He explained: “We are committed to an autumn calving policy with the cows. As a consequence, boosting fertility, health traits is vitally important.

“In terms of our current breeding policy, our aim is to focus on Holstein genetics with the highest yielding cows but to include a strong, cross-breeding focus with the other cows.”

Scott continued: “We are very interested in the Viking Genetics’ ProCROSS programme.

“This is a three-way rotation which starts with a black and white cows being bred to a Montbéliarde bull. The resulting heifers would then be crossed with a VikingRed sire. Taking this approach should also improve our milk quality.”

He concluded: “I am really looking forward to the visit. It has been perfectly times in terms of the developments that we want to consider within our own business.”

Ai Services’ Gary Henderson was a recent visitor to the Thompson farm.

“There is a growing recognition of the need to breed cows with improved health and fertility traits,” he said.

“Cows that can be maintained within a milking group are inherently more efficient and profitable. The ProCROSS programme represents a very structured way of achieving this objective.”