Linear scores in grassroots

[Mark Bowles]

After lots of work on the pedigree certificates and grassroots softwear Linear Classification scores will now be seen next to the animals name, example Farmyard Daisy VG85. In the future when you register your next calves the green pedigree certificate will show any classified animals in the 4 generations in the pedigree.
Take a look at my Linford herd on grassroots for and idea on how it looks, type in 30509 into the owner box. There are other herds that have been classified but i have not asked their permission to give the info out, its all on grassroots somewhere.
Note the max points for females, a first calver can only score a max of 89, she can be reclassified at a later date, say 4th calver, when the max score goes up to 97. If she scores higher the second time she gets a new classification score, if it is lower then the first score as a first calver still stands.

The scores are made up as below

Catagory final scores for male and females:-
Excellent 90 – 97
Very Good 85 – 89
Good Plus 80 – 84
Good 79 – 75
Fair 74 – 65
Poor 64 and below

• Maximum Points for a female
1st Calver 89 points
2nd Calver 90 points
3rd Calver 93 points
4th + Calver 97 points

There is a leaflet available from Sue in the office called "A helpful guide to Linear Classification of Dexter Cattle", this shows the Linear traits that are scored along with more information.

[Duncan MacIntyre]

This is a remarkable achievement in a very short space of time Mark, well done to all those who have helped it happen.

I am very interested not just in the overall score for an animal, but how potential buyers would access the detailed scores for each animal - will this only be available if the owner publishes it, or will we be able to see it eg. if an animal is advertised or is in an auction? I thin it is important for everyone to realise how to fully utilise this wonderful tool.

Duncan

[Mark Bowles]

The grassroots system is not set up to give all the individual animal linear scores but we are working next to get the 4 box scores, Body, Breed Character,Legs and Feet, Mammary on the system. This will at least give a breakdown that will show strengths and weakness's in the above.
At auction or private sale the buyer could ask for the full breakdowns from the seller who will have a complete printout given to them on assesment.
Obviously the buyer would need to be reasonably informed to be able to read the details but reading the Dexter Assesment leaflet should cover it.

[Duncan MacIntyre]

Anyone wishing to see what cattle have been scored,go to the animal search page on the herdbook, just enter 85 or 86 etc, and all animals with that in their name will come up.

Duncan

[Mark Bowles]

Well done Duncan, didn't know it worked like that, makes it a lot easier.

[Duncan MacIntyre]

Yes Mark, easier sometimes but if for example you key in VG you get pretty well just the VG scores, but if you put in EX then it picks up any with ex in part of the name, which happens to be in quite a lot of names anyway, so it is not perfect. If you just use the number it is better.

Duncan

[Broomcroft]

The way you would normally go about including search text within a piece of text like a name, is to use a preceding character that is not used for any other purpose. Then when you do a search you'll only get what you want every time.

So instead of recording EX at the end of the name, record for example $EX or \EX etc, any character that is not normally used. Then do a search on say $EX you'll only get the EX cattle.

But don't use wildcards in text, such as * and some other characters (can't remember what the others are).

[Saffy]

We used to have our milking herd done and it was so useful. It isn't always easy to see your most stunning cow yourself as they can change as they mature and you don't always notice.

Also the better put together animal will generally be the one that stands the test of time and in my book that is a very important trait to breed from.

One small point though, it isn't always going to be the prettiest animal that produces the most milk or beef and very often our best milker was as ugly as sin.

Stephanie

[Broomcroft]

One small point though, it isn't always going to be the prettiest animal that produces the most milk or beef and very often our best milker was as ugly as sin.

Certainly on our farm, it is usually the ugly ones that produce the best results. Quite literally, our ugliest cow (she is embarrassing to look at) produces the best offspring nearly every year. Very odd! I think there was an article in the Ark a few years ago that explained why this happened.

[PorcPrunus NL]

Nice done!

If you type just: EX9 or VG8 or GP8 or G7 or F7 or F6 or P6 in the field "name" you will find the animals with an assesment placed in that categorie!

We are thinking to duplicate the way of publishing in Holland. I think it's a good system.

A question we have:
What happends if an animal is reclassified ??
Is DCS going to send a new green certificate from all children, grandchildren etc?

for example a bull is classified as "Bullsname VG86".
5 Years later he is classified "Bullsname EX90".
But on the green certificate from his progeny is written "BUllsname VG86"

thanks in advance
Nico Steintjes & Annemiek Scholten
Secretary Holland Dexter

[Mark Bowles]

It's early days Nico, if we had a situation like that then grassroots database would be changed which would change the classification on all offspring pedigrees. The problem would be that the green pedigree we produce could be incorrect on scores, but it would not be negatively wrong, they would be better, the scores on it would be higher than they are printed. As i say grassroots database would always be correct.