AI / Semen

Dairy cross-breeding research: Results from current projects

Many dairy producers practice some crossbreeding, and the numbers increase every year. Motivating factors include a desire to improve fertility, survival, milk components, and calving ease. Some producers want cows smaller than mature Holsteins. Several large, long-term dairy crossbreeding experiments have been conducted in the United States in the past. Cows involved in previous projects were not the result of intensive selection programs for type and production that produced today’s purebred populations.