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Structure of Dairy Cattle Breeding in Western Europe and Comparisons with North America

The Agricultural Institute, Dublin 4, Ireland

ABSTRACT

The cattle population of Western Europe is slightly smaller than that of the United States but contains 32 million dairy cows versus 11 million. The dairy herd provides 80% of the beef produced against 20% in the United States. The dairy cow population in the European Economic Community consists of 15 million Friesian type cows and 10 million non-Friesian, making up 29 separate breeding populations. The structure and organization of the breeding program in these 29 populations are described. A strong inflow of North American genetic material (Holstein into the Friesian populations, Brown Swiss and Red Holstein into the others), which has been going on for some years, is quantified. Many European populations will be more than 50% North American in genetic constitution within a decade. The reasons for this shift in breeding policy are discussed.

A method is introduced for describing the effectiveness of an artificial insemination bull selection program by numbers of bulls tested per million inseminations and lifetime usage of selected bulls. This method is used to compare the breeding programs of 10 North American breeding organizations with those of 20 European and 2 New Zealand populations. In general, the European populations are making much higher investments in bull testing, whereas the North American organizations tend to have higher rates of bull usage.