Montbéliarde selection

The Montbéliarde breed has been exhibited for the first time by Joseph GRABER in 1872. The Montbéliarde has been officially recognized in 1889.

Nowadays, it is the second dairy breed in France.
Thanks to its productivity, longevity, fonctionnals and muscle covering, the Montbéliarde offers to the farmer the possibility of decently make a living. The Montbéliarde, with these qualities, can easily adapt itself to all the different kind of farming.

The company: The COMTOISE MLS

Founder and director of Jura Bétail from 1948 to 1978, Emile Richème created the linear selection and founded Montbéliarde Sélection in the 60’s.
Further to Mr Richème’s death in 1997, the LTD COMTOISE MLS has been created to pursue, promote and develop the linear selection method. Since 2010, The COMTOISE MLS is owned by a sole partner, the association called « MONTBELIARDE SELECTION ». The particularity of this association is to be directed by 17 farmers persuaded of the utility and necessity of the linear method.

Thanks to these two structures, the linear selection method imagined by Emile Richème is still developing.

The linear selection

The linear selection is based on the observation of the descendants of one bull. The objective here is not to obtain the bull positive for all the searched characteristics, but to select the characteristics independently of each other.
In this way, the COMTOISE MLS works with 8 historical lines of blood and improves them, generation after generation by always using the same method : in each family, 2 or 3 main characteristics are chosen and developed to their maximum in order to be easily and faithfully transmitted to the descendants. The potential defects will be corrected by an appropriate coupling with the other lines of descendants.
The main advantage of this method is to maintain the diversity of the breed.