Mating vs. not mating

The important part of your question is that you have already focused on SELECTION of the right bulls! A big mistake often made is that cows are mated to see which bulls should be selected - this should not be done! A general rule is you cannot not mate yourself out of a bad selection decision, and it is difficult to make poor mating decisions if good selection decisions are being made. Mating vs. Not mating continues to be a debate all over the world, and it is really a question that needs a bit more information. If you have selected a group of sires which will advance your genetics in the next generation aggressively, and you have complete and accurate pedigree records, it is a good idea to \\\'pedigree mate\\\' your cows to avoid inbreeding. The real value in mating is to prevent inbreeding, so without accurate or complete pedigree records available, I believe there is little value in mating. My justification for this opinion lies in the traditional reasons and benefits mating is thought to provide. Mating is suppossed to correct the biggest \\\'faults\\\' that a cow has - usually focusing on the linear type traits. However most cows are not culled because they are \\\'unfunctional\\\' in one of the type traits, and therefore need to be culled (for example: teats that are too wide to be milked, or legs that are so straight she can\\\'t walk). Instead cows are culled because of a health problem or they are not pregnant and fall below the production level of where she is profitably producing milk. Furthermore, without pedigree information it is difficult to be sure that a phenotypic problem is also going to be transmitted genetically. Therefore if your reason for mating is that you feel your udders are a bit too deep and it is causing a longevity problem, my preference is make sure you put enough weight on udders in your selection index (ValueBuilder) instead of trying to mate the problem out individually.