Belgian Blue, The Future of Dairy Beef Integration
With shorter gestation, easy calving, superior growth rates and a huge uptake the specially breed Short Gestation Belgian Blues are already paving a more efficient future for New Zealand dairy farmers.
Why Belgian Blue?
Samen has been breeding Belgian Blue cattle designed to be crossed with dairy cattle for over 25 years. We now have sires that produce progeny capable of adding real value to both the dairy and beef industry.
The Belgian Blue carry the Double Muscling Gene, otherwise known as a mutated Myostatin Gene, this effects how much muscle is laid down and here in New Zealand we are also noting a huge increase in their feed conversion efficiency because of the gene.
Combining this gene with easy calving and short gestation we now have the ability to tail off dairy herds with these specially bred Short Gestation Belgian Blue, tighten up the dairy farmers calving period, giving more days in milk, create easy calving and reduce/remove the number of bobby calves produced.
Key Benefits of Our Short Gestation Belgian Blue
- Extremely Short Gestation
- Calving Ease
- Superior Growth Rates
- Myostatin Gene
- Low Maintenance Calves
- Proven in New Zealand
- Highly Sought-after Offspring
Rt Hon Sir Lockwood Smith
Rt Hon Sir Lockwood Smith has been working with Belgian Blue for decades. We are very excited to be working with someone as passionate as us about the Belgian Blue. We visited Lockwood to talk about what drives his passion for the breed.
We are also working closely alongside Lockwood to create the KiwiBlue™, keep an eye out for more news about the KiwiBlue™ in the near future.
Heavy Demand For Belgian Blue
Over the last 10 years sales for the Short Gestation Belgian Blue have sky rocketed and now in just the Netherlands alone almost 1,000,000 does’s go over dairy cattle each year.
Here in New Zealand we are seeing a huge increase in the use of our Short Gestation Belgian Blue with success stories sweeping the country. Samen NZ Dairy Beef Co-ordinator Trudy Bensted notes “there is huge demand from beef rearers and finishers looking for the animals, many dairy farmers after working with the animals opt to keep them on farm and finish them”
Belgian Blue are Backed by Data
Slaughter value of bulls of different genotypes, as well as chemical composition and selected quality traits of their meat [Cepin et al. 1998]
Bringing The Dairy and Beef Industries Closer Together
What about Jerseys?
We teamed up with Jersey NZ and VikingGenetics to interview Peter Larson the Senior Breeding Manager at VikingGenetics in Denmark. Peter Larson is renowned as one of the world leading experts on the Jersey breed. In the interview we asked him which beef breed would be best over a Jersey. This is the beef snippet from that interview.
“That surly is the Blue, it would be the ideal combination. Everything proves that under our conditions. We have been doing research on not only the Blues but Charolais, Hereford, Limousin and Other breeds and there is no doubt what makes the best results are the Blues”
What about Crossbreed Cows?
With New Zealand’s dairy population being heavily crossbred we often get asked if our Short Gestation Belgian Blue is suitable over crossbred cows.
The answer is yes and here is a little snippet video of one of the herds we visited last year. These Short Gestation Belgian Blue calves are out of a crossbred herd in the Waikato region.
We Have Been Following Adrian & Pauline Balls Journey With Our Belgian Blue
Samen has been breeding Belgian Blue to create a superior Dairy Beef Solution for over 25 years, now you can take advantage of their hard work and maximise your herds potential.
• Short Gestation Length (more days in milk)
• Easy Calving
• Used Over Crossbreed, Jersey & Friesian Herds in New Zealand
• High Demand From Rearers & Finishers
• Rapid Growth Rates
• Colour Marking
• Easy Care & Great Feeders