Now that’s a headline, but it’s true a cow has sold for £100,000 which is the price you will pay to drive a decent Porsche out of a car showroom.
The truth is the five month old pedigree cow has sold for the price of a decent car. The black and white Holstein has broken previously held record prices.
A cow set a British record when it sold at auction for almost £100,000 yesterday.
Willsbro Emilyann is highly valued because of her parentage from some of the most pure-bred Holsteins in the world.
The black and white Holstein, sold to farmers in Spain, is the most expensive dairy calf ever to be auctioned in Britain.
The five-month old will grow into a cow that is able to give double the milk of the average UK dairy cow and she could produce more than 50 calves through artificial breeding.
Previously the most expensive dairy cow sold in Britain was sold for just over £50,000 while beef cows have sold for more than £100,000.
The calf named, Willsbro Emilyann, is highly valued because of her parentage from some of the most pure-bred Holsteins in the world.
She should be able to produce more than 15,000 litres of milk a year, compared to 7,800 from the average UK cow.
The calf was bred through embryonic transfer, where eggs are fertilised in a laboratory and then the embryo is transferred into a cow.
Her mother, bred in the US, is worth £400,000 and her father will also be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The calf was sold by the Wills family in Wadebridge, Devon, one of the many farms in Britain now specialising in breeding dairy cattle, although cows are sold for even more in the US and Europe.
Most dairy cattle in Britain are Holstein, which are originally from Holland and give the most milk. Breeders said the calf also showed good “structure” meaning she will breed healthy calves and her udder shows she will milk well. A dairy calf would usually sell for £600 to £800.
Jon Long, livestock editor, at Farmers Weekly said the UK dairy industry may be struggling but a small number of elite farmers are increasingly using highly-bred cattle and specialising in breeding.
“I’m sure the general public will be surprised by the price but this cow has the best genetic rating in Europe if not the world,” he added.
An average dairy calf would be expected to fetch less than £1.000.
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