HealthyCow

HealthyCow helps breed cows with improved fertility, health, and longevity.

The HealthyCow index enables farmers to find bulls that will breed even more fertile, healthier cows that stay in the herd for longer. It has been demonstrated that progeny from the top-ranking HealthyCow index show a higher health status throughout their longer lifetime.

HealthyCow

HealthyCow is a sub-index of £PLI and is intended to be used as a secondary filter. By applying a minimum criteria for HealthyCow to the bulls remaining in your list after first applying your £PLI filter, you are ensuring that these bulls have profitable daughters due to improved genetics for health, instead of just production or efficiency.

The differences between relative gains from selection on either the £PLI or the HealthyCow sub-index are illustrated in the graph.

The overall correlations between £PLI and HealthyCow index is around 0.66.

HealthyCow Relative Gains

HealthyCow impact

To further illustrate the daughter performance of top-ranking HealthyCow index bulls (Q1) vs their lower ranking counterparts (Q4), we analysed the performance of progeny in their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th+ lactations for Mastitis, Lameness, Calving Interval and overall Lifespan measured in lactations.

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This clearly shows that progeny from the top-ranking HealthyCow index have a higher health status throughout their longer lifetime as expected.

£PLI will remain the primary breeding goal, containing all of the important traits for farm profitability.

The availability of the stand-alone HealthyCow index however, allows farmers to find bulls that will breed more fertile, healthier cows with the ability to stay in the herd for longer.

HealthyCow and Gestation Length Webinar