CRV collects 4 million records of feed intake a year

CRV currently collects the daily feed intake data from five working farms (commercial dairies), totaling over 2,000 lactating cows. This results in 10,625 new feed intake records every day. With a total of 4 million records of feed intake a year, CRV is by far the world leader in collecting feed intake data.

These five working farms mainly have only daughters from CRV bulls, which means that the current breeding bulls already have large numbers of daughters which have eaten from the troughs. This therefore results in a breeding value for feed efficiency with industries highest reliability for the breeding bulls.

All this collected data is then used in the reference population, ensuring that the reliability of feed efficiency for the InSire bulls fluctuates at around 50%. This breeding value thus provides a good prediction of the feed efficiency of the future daughters. In the coming years, the number of cows with feed intake data will only increase, and thus the reliability.

Since the index run in December 2021, CRV has collected feed intake data from over 8,700 cows. As such, CRV has the biggest reference population with respect to feed intake data from individual cows. In 2017, CRV was the first breeding organisation in the world to invest in collecting feed intake data from individual cows on farms.

What this means in practice. A bull with a breeding value feed efficiency of 104 will produce daughters with 2% higher feed efficiency. For a bull with FE 108, this is 4% more efficient.

Besides Production and Lifetime, Feed Efficiency is 1 of the 3 important building blocks of CRV Efficiency. Because an efficient cow is productive, with a high lifetime production, and efficiently converts feed into milk, fat and protein.