World Wide Sires UK Cremona Tour

With Italian genetics having an increasing dominance in today’s AI industry, WorldWide Sires (WWS) UK went to the source to see progeny on home soils.

The study tour ran from 26 – 30 October and saw a party of 20 farmers and seven WWS representatives travel to Cremona to see the best of Italian Holsteins, with visits to various well managed, high performing herds and a stop at the Italian National Show.

WWS Livestock Manager, Bryan Challenor, was extremely impressed with the Italian progeny the group saw and reports on the five-day trip:

“Go-Farm was our first stop and we saw outstanding second crop Million daughters that were breeding very true to his linear and made for a great start to the trip. We saw a full sister to Artes who was a tremendous animal and also a full sister to Scooby Duu – a bull which is proving to be very influential in Italy’s on-farm genetics.

“The next farm in-line was an outstanding, well-run 1,700-cow outfit and here we saw three really good Glauco daughters. This is without doubt the cleanest farm that I have ever set foot on and impressively, they have digesters selling £16,000 worth of electricity per day to the National Grid in Italy consisting of 80% manure and 20% maize.

“On the second day it was Glauco, Wyman, Goldfish and End-Story test daughters that were up for inspection. All bulls showed unbelievable dairy strength with superb type as their proofs suggest.

“For me, the best youngstock were Struik daughters, but for customers who want production and style, Berryhill looks like the bull to use.

“The Italian National Show celebrated its 60th year and was a great finish to our trip for all. Two outstanding sires of the show were Damion and Sanchez who won two classes and Mr Sam who took another class.

“In the Championship, the 3rd calver Damion daughter, C.M.E. Dairy Web Damion Guily was the best balanced cow of the show and stood Reserve to a 68” Goldwyn that whist being too big for me, was very correct,” Bryan concluded.

The WWS Italy trip will be running again next year, so look out for more details later in 2012.