Graeme & Adele Wells

Lowline bulls mated with dairy heifers are proving a winner for Canterbury dairy farmers, Graham and Adele Wells on the Canterbury Plains.

They own 182 ha and lease other land. The milking herd should reach 830 cows this year and production last season was close to 1700kgMS/ha or 415kg/cow. Lowline bulls have been used for the past four calvings.

Four two year old Lowlines were bought from Gordon and Debbie Guthrie of Ashburton, and have performed without problems.

“They seem to get the heifers in calf easily even though they are short legged” Graham said.

The Lowlines are mated to 200 Friesian/Jersey cross heifers after the heifers have been artificially inseminated & used as mop-up bulls. The natural mating result is about 70 Lowline-cross calves.

“The biggest advantage of using Lowline bulls is easy calving”, Graham said. “We get no paralysis or calving difficulties. The calves are robust and will quickly get on their feet and feed off their mums.”

The other great advantage of Lowline cross calves is that they have no horn growth. The two types of calves are easily identified as the AI bred calves are kept as replacements.

“It’s a really important thing for a dairy farmer to tell whether it’s an AI calf or mated naturally”, Adele says.

Article courtesy of Straight Farrow, NZ.