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Miss Montbéliarde competition
Animal presentationsCattle
2025-09-17 | 01:00 PM - 01:30 PM | Ring
Information
The Montbéliarde breed will take centre stage on Wednesday with the “Miss Montbéliarde” competition.
This Competition is exclusively for first-lactation females.
Officially recognised in 1889, the Montbéliarde— France’s second largest dairy breed with 600,000 females—continues to captivate both French and international farmers. Although originally from the Franche-Comté region, this breed keeps expanding its influence across France and worldwide.
The Montbéliarde is above all the leading dairy breed of French origin, maintained across a wide variety of farming systems. Its genetic heritage includes strong adaptive capacities. It is resilient to thermal stresses (whether cold in high-altitude areas or heat in regions such as the Maghreb) as well as to structural challenges. Thanks to its robustness, which ensures lasting durability, the breed thrives equally well in both lowland systems and mountainous farms. Generally speaking, grass-based systems are ideally suited to the Montbéliarde.
And that’s no coincidence! The Montbéliarde is a dualpurpose breed, with a strong emphasis on dairy production. It can produce large quantities of milk, but not only that—it also produces milk of exceptionally high quality. In 2024, the Montbéliarde recorded 370,000 cows under the Contrôle Laitier system. The average production per cow (gross lactations – all lactations combined) reached 7,732 kg of milk. This represents nearly 650 kg more per cow than ten years ago. The quality of its milk is particularly appreciated for its protein content (33.5 g/kg), which is highly valued for cheese production. According to findings from the Eco’Montbéliarde study (a partnership between INRAE, Idele, and Montbéliarde Association), the Montbéliarde breed proves to be profitable across all systems. In addition to the additional income it provides through the value of cull cows (+20 kg of carcass weight per cow) and the fattening of male calves, the Montbéliarde is also known for its fertility (CI: 400 days – 18% of cows with CI > 450 days – 1.7 services per conception). These above-average functional traits grant the breed superior longevity (with 1 in 5 Montbéliarde cows reaching a fifth lactation or more).
The Montbéliarde breed will take centre stage in the ring starting at 01:15 pm, with 68 first-lactation cows competing in the Miss Montbéliarde Competition.
- Organizer
- SPACE
