Page 72 - Demo

Update from the Canadian
Milking Shorthorn Society
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
Shorthorn
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Oceanbrae Bentley Fontana