If you’re a pedigree breeder like us, you have the opportunity to have your animals classified, once or twice a year. This means that a classifier from HoIstein UK , the breed association, visits the farm, and scores the cattle according to various traits – feet and legs, locomotion, fore udder attachment, body depth, rear udder attachment, loin strength etc.
Due to Covid we have only had one visit this year, but were able to classify nearly all the cattle. Out of 116 cows, we had 41 Excellent and 37 Very Good which was very pleasing. As well as this, one of our homebred bulls, Brinkworth Rhys, who is classified Excellent himself, had 12 Excellent and 7 Very Good from his 19 daughters in the herd.
We have been very pleased with our home bred bulls. We recently had two pairs of sisters sired by Brinkworth Turlock VG 86 who were in their ninth and tenth lactations respectively. Our cattle are with us all their lives, and we hope that they will live as long as possible.