Do All-Canadian Heifers Make All-Canadian Cows?

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

Every year as I am watching the yearling classes at Madison and the Royal I find myself thinking about this question. You watch those massive yearlings and can’t help but wonder how many of them will be topping the classes next year, once they have calved. In typical Bullvine form, we decided to let the numbers do the talking.

Since we needed 2yr classification scores, we decided to use All-Canadian results as our guide, since we could get current classifications plus 2-year-old classification score on all the Canadian animals through Holstein Canada’s website. The following is what we found.

All-Canadian 2yr Old Performance

CRAIGCREST RUBIES GOLD REJOICE VG-89-2YR-CAN
ALL-CANADIAN SR.2-YR,INT.1-YR,INT.CALF
ALL-AMERICAN SR.2-YR,INT.1-YR,INT.CALF

First we looked at the All-Canadian, Reserve All Canadian and Honorable Mention All Canadian Sr. and Jr 2yr olds over the past 5 years. This group is led by CRAIGCREST RUBIES GOLD REJOICE who came off her momentum of Junior Champion at Madison and Reserve Junior Champion at the Royal in 2010 to be 1^st place Senior 2yr old at both Madison and the Royal. There have been nine All-Canadian, Reserve or Honourable Mention 2yr olds that were also at least nominated for All Canadian as yearlings. The others are MILIBRO GOLDWYN ROSELILACE , ROCKYMOUNTAIN GOLDWYN TRISHA, IDEE GOLDWYN LULU, LONG-HAVEN GOLD ROCHELLE, CALBRETT DUNDEE GYPSY, CROVALLEY GIBSON ALLISON, COMCO ROY SPEARS and BLONDIN LYSTER BEAUTY.

Of interesting note is that, of these 30 cows who were Honourable mention or higher as 2yr olds, 9 (30%) of them have gone on to be at least nominated again in milking form. They are led by EASTSIDE LEWISDALE GOLD MISSY, the 2010 Royal and Madison Supreme Champion. The others are BLONDIN LYSTER BEAUTY, ABF SEPTEMBER CHEESE, LONG-HAVEN GOLD ROCHELLE, BRAINWAVE GOLDWYN LAURAMIE, DUBEAU DUNDEE HEZBOLLAH, SILVERMAPLE DAMION CAMOMILE, STANHOPE LEAH GOLDWYN and LYLEHAVEN DURHAM LEKYSYA.

As a group these 30 heifers scored an average of 88 points as 2yr olds and, with age, have increased to an average of 90 points. Highlights include EASTSIDE LEWISDALE GOLD MISSY, ABF SEPTEMBER CHEESE, and EBY016 PSS TRINITY, who presently are all over 93 points.

All-Canadian Yearling Performance

T-TRIPLE-T GOLD PRIZE EX92
1st 4 Year Old, 1st Udder 2012 WDE
Unanimous All-American Winter Yearling 2009
All-Canadian Winter Yearling 2009
1st Winter Yearling & Junior Champion 2009 RAWF and WDE

So, seeing that 1/3 of the All-Canadian 2 yr. olds were even nominated as heifers, how have the All-Canadian heifers been calving in? To answer this, we looked at the All-Canadian, Reserve and Honourable Mention Yearlings, for the four yearling groups, over the past 4 years to see what they scored as 2yr olds. What we found was that only 6 of the 48 (12.5%) of these animals went on to show ring success and All-Canadian, Reserve or Honourable Mention awards in milking form. In addition to Rejoice, Trisha and Roselilace mention above there are T-TRIPLE-T GOLD PRIZE, BONACCUEIL CAMEE FINAL CUT and SALEM GOLDWYN THERESA, who were ever nominated in milking form.

The 48 animals do average an impressive 86.9 points as 2yr olds. Standouts in this group are Theresa, Prize, and Rejoice as well as WHITAKER STORMY RAE, ROB-CRI TRIBUTE SHIMMER and SIEMERS GOLDWYN GOLDIE who all scored 89 points as 2yr olds. Some have matured really well and scored an impressive 93 points or higher. Those ones are Theresa as well as GOLDENFLO ALLEN CANDLE, ATOZ GOLDWYN LIMO, JACOBS GOLDWYN EMORY and KINGSWAY DUNDEE ALABAMA.

The Bullvine Bottom Line

While the numbers would make you question just how good a job we are doing at predicting what yearling heifers will be the next great 2yr olds, you need to remember that the largest part of the Cow Judging Scorecard is mammary system (40 points), which is something that you cannot really predict as yearlings or heifers. I remember when I was first learning to judge and was taught to take a look at a heifer’s “udder promise” and try to predict what she would calve in like. After years of observation, the one thing I have learned is that, other than checking that there are four teats and no webbed ones, you cannot really tell which heifers are going to calve in great and which ones will not. For that you are far better to check out their maternal line and sire stack and go from there (Read more – Who’s The Next Great One? and 7 Sires to Use in Order to Breed the Next World Dairy Expo Champion ). While the numbers do show that great show heifers don’t always make great show cows, this exercise does highlight how the accomplishments of CRAIGCREST RUBIES GOLD REJOICE are truly outstanding.