The Ayrshire breed will be making a splash at this year's International Dairy Week with hundreds of breeders from around the world descending on the event that starts on Sunday.
Ayrshires will be the feature breed at IDW to coincide with the World Ayrshire Federation Conference, which is being held in Australia for the first time in almost 30 years.
The conference will be built around an 18-day tour from South Australia to NSW with IDW the main attraction.
IDW will run from Sunday, January 19, to Thursday, January 23, at Tatura, Vic.
IDW event manager Robyn Barber said entries for the Ayrshire show were up significantly on previous years to about 175, helping to drive an overall 10 per cent lift in numbers for IDW.
The program has been rejigged to give Ayrshires pride of place on the Tuesday. The Ayrshire show will run in the ring by itself on the Tuesday morning, while the Illawarras and Brown Swiss will run later on the Tuesday afternoon and the Guernseys will share the ring with the junior Jersey classes on the Wednesday morning.
"Given that is their (Ayrshire's) special year and their global conference and they've got at least 100 international visitors and many more Australian visitors coming along ... we felt it was only right to give them the glory of the show ring in their own right," Ms Barber said.
With everything that's been hitting dairy farmers for a number of years now, to get over a 1000 entries again in a very tough year speaks volumes for the exhibitors.
- Robyn Barber, event manager
An Ayrshire sale will be one of four to be held at the event in a revamped sales program.
Ms Barber said the Jersey sale was being done a little bit differently this year with Declan Patten taking on responsibility for it, together with Dairy Livestock Services.
"He and his group of people are injecting a bit of difference in it and certainly are ramping it up to be something quite spectacular, which is fantastic," she said. The World Wide Sires Holstein sale and a Guernsey sale will also feature.
Ms Barber said the increase in show entries to about 1015 entries was wonderful, particularly given the difficulties the industry was facing.
"With everything that's been hitting dairy farmers for a number of years now, to get over a 1000 entries again in a very tough year speaks volumes for the exhibitors," she said.
Exhibitors would come from all states in Australia and included a sprinkling of first-time exhibitors.
The machinery exhibition is also being changed with a move from the oval to a space between the oval and the main show shed.
"It is really to bring it closer to the main flow of people so as people walk through that area it will give those businesses a bit more closeness and proximity to main action," Ms Barber said. "There won't be as many big machines -- but they will flow out on the oval."
The increased sales program has also prompted a timetable change for the Power of Women event, which will now be held on the Monday night.
World Ayrshire Federation Conference
Australian Ayrshires president Scott Braendler, Kalangadoo, South Australia, said about 120 overseas visitors from the United States, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sweden and the United Kingdom were taking part in the conference tour.
The tour would include eight herd visits as well as IDW.
Mr Braendler said the Ayrshire sale would be special. One had not been held at last year's IDW to ensure a high quality sale this year. "We have picked out 20 of the best pedigrees that were submitted to go into the sale, from most of the leading herds around Australia," he said.
A silent embryo auction will also be held as part of the conference, featuring embryos from five countries. It will run from the start of the tour until the Wednesday of IDW and successful bidders will be announced at the conference dinner to be held at IDW. Exhibitors and helpers at he show will attend the dinner, along with the tour participants.
Mr Braendler said the conference, which is held every four years, would be great for the breed in Australia.
Ayrshires were a good all round breed, he said. Ayrshire cows were low maintenance with good health traits, low somatic cell counts and high butterfat and protein percentages.
But the breed struggled sometimes, as did other minor breeds, in trying to get semen companies to take the breed to market, but the breed society was trying to do more of the marketing itself.The embryo sale was a plus, opening up the opportunity for Australian embryo packages to be sold to NZ or the UK.
The breed was also working on trying to get genomic breeding values. The small numbers made it difficult to have a large enough database but the Australian society was working with NZ and the World Ayrshire Federation was also working on genomic development.
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This story first appeared on Australian Dairyfarmer