BRS press conference: RZ Made in Germany presented

Many dairy farmers are familiar with the abbreviation RZ from publications on breeding value estimation. It indicates the relative breeding value for various traits, such as longevity, milk yield, somatic cell count and many other important trait composites. RZ also stands for correct breeding or Breeding Made in Germany. Germany is a leader in terms of data quality and breeding value estimation procedures and can therefore show itself to be self-confident. In addition, from 2nd April, Holstein breeders in Germany will also be able to use breeding values for animal health for the first time. The new genomic health breeding values are a great step forward for Holstein breeding.

In order to present their characteristics and development as well as their application in practice, the German Livestock Association (BRS) invited editors of several farm magazines on 7 March 2019.

Egbert Feddersen from BRS, Stefan Rensing from vit and Rolf Oorlog from Masterrind gave lectures on this occasion. They impressively conveyed the international position of the German relative breeding values, the broad database and high quality of the German breeding evaluation. Thanks to this farmers can now work with the new breeding values for health. How this works in practice could be seen by the guests during a visit at the nearby Westrup-Koch farm. Ulrich Westrup explained why he is a convinced participant in the KuhVision project and how he uses the previous and new RZ breeding values in the selection of bulls for his herd in order to continuously improve herd health on his farm. Further information of the new breeding values and documents of the press conference are under www.richtigzuechten.de.

On demand, we will be happy to provide further photos. The use of the pictorial material in the context of reporting on the health breeding values and under indication of the source www.richtigzuechten.de are free of charge.