New study of the Padua University in cooperation with colleagues coming from the Netherlands, Ireland and New Zealand: crossbreeding leads to a reduction of milk production but also to a big increase in fertility, longevity and dairy efficiency.

European breeders will debate this and other topical issues of the dairy sector during the International Dairy Cattle Show (Cremona, Italy, October 28^th-31^st 2010).

Cremona – “Crossbreeding isn’t a prodigy that can solve all the problems in the dairy breeding centers, but if you want to breed fertile and longevous cows, it is surely one of the main ways to walk.”

These are words of Mr. Giovanni Bittante, professor of zootechnics and genetic improvement at Padua University. He continues: “In Italy, crossbreeding has been introduced in the last 3 or 4 years, and also in the USA - where it obtained very good results - interest in crossbreeding appeared not more than 10 years ago.

Our researches, done in cooperation with other universities in the Netherlands, Ireland and New Zealand, demonstrated that crossbreeding is the best way to contrast the decrease of fertility of Holstein, for example. However, crossbreeding must be used carefully to not generate confusion; first of all, only pure races must be used to be crossbred.”

In Italy, the number of farmers that choose crossbreeding is constantly increasing, and in October 2009 a new National Association is born; nowadays there are about 400 farms in Italy that introduced crossbreeding.

“Most of the problems of Holstein cows – Mr. Bittante says – are related to fertility and longevity, that decreased because of the growth of milk production. These criticalities could be solved crossbreeding Holstein with other races like Brown, Jersey or Simmental, for example.

Moreover, our studies confirm that one of the main results of crossbreeding is the high quality of the milk and its dairy efficiency; this is very important for productions like Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano.”

Genetic selection and productivity will be two of the most important issues of the International Dairy Cattle Show (Cremona, Italy, October 28^th-31^st 2010), that will be the meeting point of all European breeders coming to Cremona for the All European Holstein and Red Holstein Championship.