Page 72 - Shorthorn Magazine

Update from the Canadian Milking Shorthorn Society
Canadian MS
72
Shorthorn
Hello to our British Dairy Shorthorn friends. It has been a challenging year for many farmers in Canada. Many of those in the western provinces dealt with severe drought and wildfires. Much of eastern Canada got too much rain at times, with some farmers having to reseed crops or having long delays in harvesting feed.
Here in Prince Edward Island, we had a very wet growing season but we had enough windows in the weather to get quality feed made of good quantity.
One of the larger projects for the CMSS in the last couple of years has been to build a database of genotyped animals with the aim of being able to provide genomic evaluations to Canadian Milking Shorthorns. Over the past two years, we have genotyped close to 600 head and we have plans to test more in the near future. We have genotyped a cross section of animals from across the country, with particular focus on older cows, any
bulls that we could genotype (from stored semen or hair samples), and any animals that had stored hair samples for parentage verification. Work has begun with our national genetic evaluation center to work with these genotypes as well as genotypes from other countries to start the journey toward providing genomic evaluations.
Our summer Field Day and Annual Meeting was held in mid-July in St. Marys, Ontario at Richford Farms. Don and Karen Richardson and family were terrific hosts, and the weather mostly cooperated with us. Their son Sheldon only recently purchased the Lynmark herd from Eastern Ontario, so the barn had an impressive group of cattle
for viewing. We had a substantial crowd of both new and long-time Milking Shorthorn breeders in attendance. The day prior, our Board of Directors held a classification workshop with one of the head classifiers from Holstein Canada, as we look to update some of our linear scores and overall scorecard by early 2024.
Also, this summer, we saw the latest release from the CMSS Syndicates young sire program with Semex. Top Shelf Royal Laser is an Ecuafarm Kaiser Royalty son out of
Trilow Zeus Lala, a past Reserve Grand Champion at the World Dairy Expo with milk records exceeding 30,000 lbs in 305 days. This is the second American bull we have brought into the program, in order to make high quality American genetics available to our breeders as well as breeders worldwide. We hope to have a new Canadian sire join the program in mid-2024. Oceanbrae Foster got his first official proof this year, currently sitting at #4 on our proof list just behind Oceanbrae Royal Bentley. Both are getting significant use around the world. The CMSS also coordinated imports of semen on a couple
of international bulls this year, including the UK sire Cotonhall Solomon.
In October, Judge Matt Henkes of Iowa, USA completed judging of our National Virtual Show, were breeders from across the country provide photos and videos of their animals. Junior Champion of the virtual show was Richford Tributation Chloe (sired by Illawarra Ovensdale Jennys Tribute), owned by Richford Farms of St. Marys, Ontario. Our Grand Champion cow was Oceanbrae Bentley Fontana (sired by Oceanbrae Royal Bentley), owned by Oceanbrae Farms of Belmont, Prince Edward Island.
As always, if any British Shorthorn breeders are headed to Canada and would like to arrange a visit to any Milking Shorthorn breeders, please feel free to contact me. It’s always a pleasure to host fellow Shorthorn breeders from around the world.
Ryan Barrett
Secretary- Manager, Canadian Milking Shorthorn Society