Ayrshire cow pic

[Up North]

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#4 Gretta, sired by 7A59 Gold. Her Dam is a 7 year old cow sired by 190AY2 Sanrosa Royal Paul from New Zealand. Gretta is due with her 3rd calf on August 5th to 7A81 Patriot, so she will be getting dryed off early June.
This is a pic of one of our favorite Ayrshires. She has New Zealand breeding in her background. She's not very big but she is put together beautifully. She has a very nice attitude too. Just one of those cows that never causes any problems, temperment and health wise. We held back her bull calf this year for a breeding bull. So far he is looking very promising.

Heather

[linn]

Beautiful cow. I have a couple of questions about Ayshires. You mentioned temperment. Are Ayshires normally gentle and easy to handle? How high is the butterfal percentage?

[JeffNY]

She looks good, good rump structure, fairly deep, open ribbed, good topline. Her udder seems well attached. What's funny about those ayshires, is the fact they look so ---- close to red holsteins.



Jeff

[evermoor]

It was a common perception that red and whites were used in the up grading of the breed esp. in Quebec where there are more shires than in the us. How else can you get 62" girls. I'd be lucky to get anywhere near 60 with ours. As for temperment is wildly varies on the individual. My four year old plays with one mature cow, while some are down right vicious when they want to be. They are a strong, independent animal with a lot of gumption to pull them through the rough spots in life. Last year our herd average for the ayrshires was 17,093 3.7% BF 630 # BF 3.2% P 542#P on 10 head (avg score is 88pts!) This years will be much higher as two cows have completed 25,000 plus pounds of milk, one averaged almost a 5% BF. They have really nice type traits and few problems the holsteins encounter. Just try one before you buy her to see if you fit together. PS ayrshire beef is not to bad either.

[Up North]

Originally Posted by linn

Beautiful cow. I have a couple of questions about Ayshires. You mentioned temperment. Are Ayshires normally gentle and easy to handle? How high is the butterfal percentage?

Most Ayrshires 3 years old and up are gentle and easy to handle. The new heifers can be a bit spirited and take more patience to train in than some of the other dairy breeds. A lot of that depends on the cow or bull family they are from. We have learned which bulls not to use as they produce cows that are difficult to work with. The Holstein breed has bulls like that too. The Ayrshire breed has vigor, strength, and hardiness. The tradeoff is that sometimes those traits can produce a lightning fast kick or a flighty animal.
You learn to herd Ayrshires differently than other breeds, you walk. You don't ever want to run and get their blood up, LOL.
As for Butterfat, they are not as good as a Guernsey but comparable to most other colored breeds. Our last plant report showed a whole herd BF of 3.9%, but that includes some Holstien, Jersey Cross, and R&W Hol cross cows.

[Up North]

Originally Posted by JeffNY

She looks good, good rump structure, fairly deep, open ribbed, good topline. Her udder seems well attached. What's funny about those ayshires, is the fact they look so ---- close to red holsteins.



Jeff

At a glance the big Ayrshires look like R&W Holstein. Advantages are stronger feet&legs, less calving difficulties, while the R&W Holstein generally will offer larger capacity and higher milk production. Some of our better crossbred cows are from good type Ayrshire dams bred to hi-production R&W Holstein sires. Produces a good balance of strength, hardiness, and production.

[Up North]

Evermoor that sounds like a real good string of Ayrshires you have there, and you're right the steers eat good too!!!!!

[evermoor]

Originally Posted by Up North

Evermoor that sounds like a real good string of Ayrshires you have there, and you're right the steers eat good too!!!!!

Thank you for the compliment, by the looks of it there are some impressive cows in your herd too. The shires work well with our predominate jersey herd. In fact I own more shires than jerseys, due to an abundance of jersey bull calves. It is hard to imagine that fewer people own them, since they are hardy as shortys, reproduce almost as good as jerseys, without the health problems of holsteins. But again they first thing we taught the kids with our mixed breed showstring was that ayrshires kick!!!

[Up North]

Originally Posted by evermoor

Thank you for the compliment, by the looks of it there are some impressive cows in your herd too. The shires work well with our predominate jersey herd. In fact I own more shires than jerseys, due to an abundance of jersey bull calves. It is hard to imagine that fewer people own them, since they are hardy as shortys, reproduce almost as good as jerseys, without the health problems of holsteins. But again they first thing we taught the kids with our mixed breed showstring was that ayrshires kick!!!

...........................Evermoor............... ..
That Vigor is why the calves live without fussing over them, the cows have a calf every year with little assistance, and our cows average 6 calves and 6.25 lactations. Seems they fizzle after that 6th calf, kinda like hitting the wall when running a marathon. Maybe someday I'll get past that.
Just a sidenote, with your Rolling herd average, your Ayrshires would be in top 5 of 18 Ayrshire herds(last time I saw stats) on DHI test in WI. We have had several Ayrshire cows that went 23,000 lbs plus a lactation, and one that produced 26,400 with 4.0 BF, but our Ayrshire string herd average is lower than yours. Lots of new heifers and stingy with grain moreso every year as forages get better.
Right now we have Ayrshires in milking string out of following sires:
Lot,Jason, Trident, Spectacular,Reward, Recruiter, SkyBuck,Tracker,Hawk, Herman, Wandringeye, Royal Paul(NZ), And some produced by cleanup bulls purchased from top Breeders.
Springing heifers out of Skybuck, Trident, Lot, Swedmark, Big Nick, Savior,Tri-Star,Runaway,and others I'd have to look up, LOl.
Any sisters down there?. Thoughts, likes, dislikes? Like to hear your results with them. In reading about development of Ayrshire breed, milking shorthorn was one of genetic contributors. They sure look like cousins to some of our smaller Ayrshires.
Even our small Ayshires will get right in there and get their share of feedbunk alongside Holsteins, Normany/Holstein crosses, and Jersey crosses. They're not shy. They take the cold and heat well too.
They are, as Robert Duvall said in the movie "LONESOME DOVE"....
"Cheerful in all weather, never shirked a task"

[evermoor]

We just enrolled the herd in the ABA's gold program so hopefully next year we will get ranked. I purchased my cows when the university where I worked at decided to *(&^*@%$ themselves. Sorry bad subject. They were merged to a majority of Canadain type cows so, a majority of our cows are BBK or tridents, along with reward, rebate, paddy 2, Savage, Dynomeir, and iceman. Looking forward to calve in heifers by Special K, Pardner, and Nolan. The special K sister was our first HM AA JR 2. I actaully used some BBK on our shorthorns but it was a bull, and used Ayrshires for shorthorn embryo recips. Ours seem to kick it up after three lactations and hold steady Noreena at 10-02 made 15,000 with 3.6 and 3.2. One my my favorites is Fanny who is 7-10 19,900 3.8 and 3.3, and Vicki ( my $400 saved from market) who is 5-09 23570 3.6 and 3.0 (3rd record over 20,000).

[Up North]

Them Pardners throw some big calves. We had a couple pardner and Avenger bull calves that were Hoilstein size. Lots of BBK in backgrounds of young sires we use.