BREEDING ▶▶▶
The most expensive dairy cow in the world
Why has “Doc” just smashed the sales record, and why is she so valuable? Doc – or if you use her official name, S-S-I Doc Have Not 8784-ET – is a large and gorgeous Holstein cow.
BY TREENA HEIN, FREELANCE CORRESPONDENT D
oc is mostly black in coat colour, has a tremen- dous udder and shines with health. But it’s what’s inside Doc – her genes – that led to her recently smashing the previous sales record for a Holstein
cow in the United States (and as far as anyone can gather, the world). On a fine Saturday in early June 2022, she sold for US$ 1.925 million, or € 1.880,000. Doc is one of six Holstein
females that have sold for over US$ 1 million over the last few decades, four of which are still relevant in the industry, explains Kevin Jorgensen, senior holstein sire analyst at US- based genetics firm Select Sires, which owns Doc’s first son. Doc is approaching five years old. Doc is now owned by Mike and Julie Duckett of Duckett Holsteins in Wisconsin (where Doc lives), Dave and LouAnne King and Tom Kugler of AOT Genetics, Kings-Ransom Farm (the King family farm owned by business partners – and Dave’s brothers – Jan and Jeff King) in New York state, and Tim and Sharyn Abbott of Borderview Genetics in Vermont.
It’s what’s inside Doc – her genes – that led to her recently smash- ing the previous sales record for a Holstein cow in the United States.
26 ▶ DAIRY GLOBAL | Volume 9, No. 3, 2022
Cow breeding Kugler had bred Doc’s dam, and another of her direct an- cestors was bred at Kings-Ransom Farm. In 2021, Dave and LouAnne were presented with the Master Breeder award from the New York Holstein Association. So far, they’ve bred 15 cows with the Excellent rating that have the Midas- Touch prefix, including Midas-Touch Jedi Jangle-ET Ex 93, Midas-Touch AV Cling-ET Ex 92 and Midas-Touch Mccut Malibu-ET Ex 92. Doc herself scores Excellent (94) overall and Excellent (96) in the udder category. Further back into Doc’s genetics, her ancestry directly traces back ten generations (about 30 years) to Snow-N Denises Dellia EX-95, a cow that, according to many, ranks among a handful of the greatest cows in the Holstein breed. Jorgensen explains why Dellia EX-95 was one of the most influential cows of the breed. “She had female offspring that performed well in all environments: in the show arena, commercial world, in the high genetics arena,” he says. “Her sons Dundee and Durham and others also had a transfor- mational impact on the breed in their ability to sire cows that combined production, fitness and eye-appeal in one package. Very few cows can do this and now, after all these generations, Doc has emerged.”
Doc’s genetics Genetically, Doc is a unicorn in a few ways. Her current Genomic Total Performance Index (GTPI), a measure of her to- tal genetic package, is +2742. (GTPI scores are updated every three months with performance and progeny data.) That score is not so rare, but it is rare in a cow of Doc’s age. For comparison, the top Holstein bull in the world has a GTPI of
PHOTOS: BETH HEDGES
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