While Brazilian farmers wanted to use more NZ genetics they couldn’t register the cows as pedigree, CRV Ambreed global product manager Peter Van Elzakker said.
“The challenge we currently have is the more stringent rules applied by the Brazilian Jersey herd book.”
The NZ herd book was less restrictive, which made it easier for this country’s commercial Jersey farmers to become registered breeders.
CRV Ambreed is working with Jersey NZ and Brazil’s National Jersey Council vice-president Claudio Martins to overcome these restrictions. He visited NZ in March with his wife Carla and son Daniel, along with CRV Lagoa Jerseys product manager Albert Kuipers and sales representative Paulo Kessler.
The Martins run 1800 cows on 2500ha in the Rio Grande du Sol region in southern Brazil. Their dairy beef operation milks 300 pedigree Jersey cows.
Brazilian dairy farmers were very interested in finding out what NZ genetics could do for them and how the two countries could do more business together, especially in elite dairy cattle genetics, Martins said.
“Personally I am interested in looking for more production efficiencies from my cows from lower cost feeding and grazing,” he said.
“I also want to increase my profitability by using the right genetics that suit my farming system, rather than having to adapt my system to the cows.”
Brazil is CRV’s fifth largest market in South America for sales, but has the most cows so the growth potential was tremendous, Van Elzakker said.
“Opening up and growing our international markets is obviously very important to CRV Ambreed,” he said.
“For breeders in NZ who register their cows there could be more opportunities between our countries when it comes to elite genetics.”
Brazilian farmers were also interested in NZ projects to improve genetic gain in cattle breeds, such as the Jersey Genome initiative. This joint venture project between Jersey NZ and CRV Ambreed is in its sixth year. The project has already achieved a combined 47% gain in genetic traits such as Breeding Worth, protein, liveweight, total longevity, fertility, udder overall and dairy conformation.
