Abstract
The objective of this study was to determine beef production traits of purebred Holstein-Friesian (Hol) and Hol×beef breed crossbred bulls. The data collected from slaughterhouses included observations of 87323 purebred Hol, 783 Hol×Aberdeen angus (Hol×Ab), 621 Hol×Blonde d’Aquitaine (Hol×Ba), 562 Hol×Charolais (Hol×Ch), 349 Hol×Hereford (Hol×Hf), 1691 Hol×Limousin (Hol×Li) and 570 Hol×Simmental (Hol×Si) bulls. For estimating valuable cuttings also a separate dataset was collected and included observations of 8806 purebred Hol, 57 Hol×Ab, 29 Hol×Ba, 22 Hol×Ch, 15 Hol×Hf, 111 Hol×Li and 58 Hol×Si bulls. Crossbreeding Hol cows with late maturing breeds (Ba, Ch, Li, Si) had favorable effects on carcass gain, conformation and proportion of high value joints of the progeny when compared to purebred Hol bulls. No advantages in proportion of valuable cuttings seemed to be obtained by crossbreeding with Ab or Hf breeds, while the improvements in gain and conformation were intermediate compared to the late maturing crossbreds.
Highlights
The majority of beef in Finland has been produced by dairy breeds, and Finnish Ayrshire (Ay) and Holstein-Friesian (Hol) are the two most frequently used breeds
The average slaughter age for purebred Hol bulls was 587 days, and there were no remarkable differences in the average slaughter ages among breed groups
Improvements in beef production traits obtained by crossbreeding Holstein-Friesian dairy cows with beef breed sires are highly dependent of the choice of sire breed
Summary
The majority of beef in Finland has been produced by dairy breeds, and Finnish Ayrshire (Ay) and Holstein-Friesian (Hol) are the two most frequently used breeds. The decrease in the number of dairy cows has diminished the supply of calves for beef production originating from dairy herds (Karhula and Kässi 2010). Slaughterhouse pricing favours heavy carcasses and the average carcass weights of slaughtered animals have clearly increased during recent years (Karhula and Kässi 2010). Allen 1998) and, on the other hand, market demand in Scandinavia concerning carcass fat is different from those beef markets where marbled beef is favoured (Herva et al 2011). Consumers generally favour low-fat products in Finland, and the beef industry has stated that optimally two thirds of the carcasses would have a EUROP fat score of 2 and one third a EUROP fat score of 3 (Herva et al 2011). There are penalties for carcasses under 320 kg with fat scores 3–5 and for carcasses over 320 kg with fat scores 4–5
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