Gippsland farmer Daryl Hoey has had numerous bulls go into the AI system, but his latest addition is something special.<\/p>\n
GT, which is joining the Genetics Australia Jersey portfolio this spring, has been named in honour of Daryl\u2019s great mate, Greg Tiller.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s a bittersweet moment, it also gives Daryl great pride to recognise the contribution Greg made to his Beulah Jerseys herd and to the cattle breeding industry in general.<\/p>\n
Greg died suddenly on August 20, 2023, after a 20-year career as a Genetics Australia field sales representative based at Rochester in northern Victoria.<\/p>\n
Daryl now farms at Wonthaggi but met Greg not long after he bought his previous farm at Katunga in 2002.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreg started at GA a few months after we bought the farm and he became one of my best friends,\u201d Daryl said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe spent plenty of hours on the phone or at the kitchen table discussing genetics.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy enjoyment out of breeding cows and breeding bulls has never been the same since the loss of Greg.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve lost someone that I spent so much time discussing and debating genetics with. His death left a massive hole in my life \u2014 I just don\u2019t have those same conversations with anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
The connections Greg made with farmers went well beyond genetics.<\/p>\n
\u201cApart from just calling on farms to make sales, Greg would talk about farming and life and making sure people were okay,\u201d Daryl said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreg was always there if you needed those conversations. He was always conscious of other people\u2019s circumstances and always checked in on people and made sure everyone was okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite Daryl\u2019s loss, GT the bull is set to do GT the man proud.<\/p>\n
While Daryl has had plenty of bulls in AI, GT is special not only for the emotional connection but for his outstanding potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t necessarily strive to put a bull into AI,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith over 80 per cent of semen used being sexed, breeding bulls is not a focus. I just strive to breed better genetics in my herd and then sometimes the genetics come together to produce something special.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have consistent cow families and high-indexing animals then the chances of that happening is greater. The high genomic animals keep coming to the top if you keep breeding your better lines to good bulls.\u201d<\/p>\n
GT comes from a long line of cows stemming back to south-west Victorian farmers Rosemary and Pat Roache\u2019s Fairy cow family, which produced the bull Outinfront that Genetics Australia bought more than 20 years ago.<\/p>\n
This led to the Fairy family in Daryl\u2019s Beulah Jerseys, one of his strongest cow families.<\/p>\n
GT\u2019s mother Dougg T Fairy was the number one genomics heifer in Australia, and is still ranked ninth, and his grandmother Triple N Fairy was one of the top genomic animals in her year group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cow family for four or five generations has always been high on genomics for the year level and GT seems to have picked up a lot of his sire\u2019s attributes,\u201d Daryl said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got strong mammary and fertility, which are some of the key areas that I\u2019m focusing on at the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cFertility is something the breed seems to have forgotten about. He\u2019s a really solid bull, not necessarily outstanding in one particular area but solid across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dougg T Fairy was sent to Genetics Australia\u2019s TLG centre at Camperdown to be flushed and when they got two heifers and two bulls, Daryl was determined to make sure a bull was named in recognition of Greg.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has special meaning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
GT\u2019s two embryo transfer Starlord sisters are still the number one and two females born in 2024 and will be soon flushed at TLG.<\/p>\n
Daryl now milks about 300 cows, 95 per cent Jersey, on 177 hectares near Wonthaggi.<\/p>\n
He hopes that by adding GT to the Genetics Australia spring 2025 release he will be able to honour his friend and breeding buddy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t always agree but he never told you that you were wrong,\u201d Daryl said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreg always let you decide yourself but he challenged you and threw different options on the table. He always kept the communication lines open.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gippsland farmer Daryl Hoey has had numerous bulls go into the AI system, but his latest addition is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[200,79],"class_list":["post-165113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-genetics","tag-genetics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}