Recently Braedale Goldwyn became the 1st sire ever to produce 1000 Excellent daughters in Canada (Read more – Goldwyn First Ever to 1000 EX in Canada). At this year’s Royal Winter Fair Goldwyn sired 27% of the animals shown, including Grand, Reserve, Honorable Mention, Intermediate, Reserve Intermediate and Honorable Mention Intermediate Champions (Read More – The 2012 Royal Winter Fair Holstein Show – One of the Greatest Stories Ever Told). It is no surprise that many enthusiasts declare Goldwyn to be the greatest type sire ever.
Grand Champion Selection at the 2012 Royal Winter Fair. All sired by Braedale Goldwyn
At the Bullvine we wanted to determine the secret to Goldwyn’s tremendous success. When you look at Goldwyn’s conformation values for Chest Width (-3) and Body Depth (-4) you don’t instantly assume that he would be such a dominant type sire. In order to analyze Goldwyn’s type transmitting ability versus other great sires, we looked at his ability to sire the pinnacle of the breed – an Excellent cow. To make it a level playing field, we looked at sires that had a significant number of their daughters that were 5 years or older. In other words, that were eligible to go Excellent. Here is what we found.
Sire Born Conf %GP EX VG GP G F %EX
ERBACRES DAMION 23-Jul-00 15 90 104 962 1254 257 7 4
BRAEDALE GOLDWYN 3-Jan-00 12 85 1017 10837 14493 4450 271 3
SHOREMAR BKB ALLEGRO 1-Sep-00 11 88 22 103 136 33 2 7
WILCOXVIEW JASPER 5-Jun-99 11 84 159 2517 3926 1211 56 2
INNWOOD TERRASON 21-Jun-96 10 82 238 1583 2562 914 48 4
LADINO PARK TALENT-IMP 31-Mar-98 10 79 517 4624 8843 3583 194 3
BKB AFFIRMED 17-Sep-01 10 84 3 77 144 42 0 1
RENAISSANCE TRIUMPHANT 7-May-95 9 88 101 446 434 131 5 9
FUSTEAD EMORY BLITZ 2-Mar-96 9 75 213 2118 4399 2062 153 2
SUNNYLODGE LINJET 1-Mar-92 8 87 282 392 1244 365 7 12
EK-OSEEANA ASPEN 4-May-00 8 83 24 101 161 54 6 7
REGANCREST DUNDEE 3-May-99 8 83 480 3871 5737 1984 91 4
ROYLANE JORDAN 1-May-96 8 81 195 1591 2583 1022 47 4
WINDY-KNOLL-VIEW PRIMETIME 8-Mar-00 7 81 91 529 468 317 9 6
DUPASQUIER CARISMA 25-Sep-01 7 83 59 714 1377 417 9 2
BOSS IRON 17-Jul-96 7 75 21 427 948 439 23 1
MARKWELL KITE 12-Mar-99 6 79 77 619 1017 432 27 4
VALLEYRIVER RUBEN REDMAN 17-Jun-99 6 80 91 814 1403 536 25 3
INDIANHEAD ENCOUNTER 28-Nov-99 5 79 17 200 353 148 7 2
OSEEANA ASTRONOMICAL 15-Sep-90 4 81 219 1157 1582 638 55 6
HANOVER-HILL-R SPIRIT 26-Dec-92 2 80 127 569 783 347 16 7
HANOVERHILL STARBUCK 26-Mar-79 -1 71 419 7257 19324 10818 177 1
DONNANDALE SKYCHIEF 24-Aug-86 -2 74 277 2573 4429 2423 124 3
MARSHFIELD ELEVATION TONY 6-Aug-72 -6 73 36 776 1869 960 7 1
What stands out when looking at these sires is that, even though Goldwyn has a high conformation index, there are no less than 12 sires (Linjet, Triumphant, Allegro, Aspen, Spirit, Primetime, Astronomical, Damion, Terrason, Dundee, Jordan and Kite) that actually had a higher percentage of their classified daughters score EX. Linjet, Triumphant, Allegro, Aspen, Spirit, Primetime, and Astronomical have more than double the percentage of their daughters scoring Excellent compared to Goldwyn.
RF GOLDWYN HAILEY EX-97-2E-CAN
2012 Supreme Champion World Dairy Expo
2012 Supreme Champion Royal Agriculture Winter Fair
Let’s take a closer look at Linjet, Triumphant, Allegro and Aspen. These sires not only have a higher percentage of daughters classifying Excellent, they also have a lower percentage scoring Good or lower. This highlighted something very interesting. On average, the 2 yr old daughters of this group of sires actually scored lower than Goldwyn’s daughters, but as they matured, they tended to significantly increase in score. Since the sire conformation index only uses classification scores as 2 year olds, this age improvement was not reflected in all of their conformation scores. Not being able to foretell this age improvement had a significant effect on semen sales of these bulls because most breeders use conformation to determine what type sires to use. As a result breeders missed out on these sires whose daughters matured later and scored higher later in life. This was especially true for Allegro and Aspen, whose later-maturing daughters developed outstanding dairy strength post first lactation.
The Bullvine Bottom Line
There is no question that Goldwyn has had the most number of Excellent daughters, nearly double the number produced by second place sire, LADINO PARK TALENT-IMP. But why is this? Is it the result of his great type transmitting ability, or is it his type proof combined with his high LPI proof resulted in much greater use. In other words, is it volume or is it quality? Undoubtedly, Goldwyn has been the most dominant type sire of the past decade, the bottom line question is,”Does Goldwyn dominate because of ability or because of opportunity?”
Looking to find out what to breed your Golwyn’s to? Check this out Breeding the Next Show Winners
While no one can doubt that Goldwyn has been a great bull for the show ring, I personally believe that his success is because of the amount that he’s been used. There is no doubt that he has been in very, very high demand over the past several years. When you look at the big picture: breeders started using him several years ago as his first daughters started to have some great success; other breeders jumped on the bandwagon and then the dominos began to fall. I think his success as use has little to do with his actual type proof and LPI proof and more to do with breeders using him because of his success in the shows and viewing his daughters elsewhere. Like you said above; his conformation values do not stand out and say “This is a great type sire.” Look how many bulls, especially type bulls, that are available that are sired by Goldwyn. So many of them are Goldwyn sons (or progeny of Goldwyn daughters) that breeders are actually worrying about the genetic diversity in the Holstein breed in years to come. Look at the hundreds of show cattle that have been flushed repeatedly to Goldwyn. Lets face it; Goldwyn probably wouldn’t have this type of success if he wasn’t used to flush just about every top show prospect animal to produce many, many embryos. He had great opportunity because of this; and that was from the get-go. When you look at the numbers of EX, VG, GP, G daughters that Goldwyn has across the board; it is quite obvious that he has been used to the extreme compared to the other bulls in your line-up. Not that this is a bad thing; but Goldwyn would not have this type of success if he wasn’t used the way he has been (he has been used heavily)
Caylei,
Totally agree. One could counter that he had to be pretty good to be used on all those cows (which he was), and he still had to do the job once he was used (which he did). Hence why he is no doubt one of the greatest. Question is, is he the greatest?
Thanks Erik Klugkist for pointing out ERBACRES DAMION.
Why is Durham not included in the list?
Because his semen was not eligible for Canada he had very limited daughters here. Hence not a good representation of his full breeding pattern.
My post was refferring to the questions left in your Bullvine Bottom Line. He is great because he had the opportunity to be great. Few bulls, if any, have ever had this type of opportunity to reach this type of peak. I think DAMION could really be one of the top type bulls out there if he had more opportunity like Goldwyn. I think if it was an even playing field and all of the bulls on your list had the same opportunitien then, and only then, would we truly know if Goldwyn was/is the greatest. But obviously that is not a possibility. I’d be interested to see the numbers worked up from American statistics, not just Canadian.
Are we forgettin maughlin storm?
It would be interesting to see how many of those excellent daughters came from VG dams? No doubt he makes great cattle!