Performance characteristics of high genetic merit cows on different feeding systems are not only important to establish the biological and economic consequences of current genetic selection practices, but can be used also to establish ‘standards’ which will be helpful to people who want to develop breeding, management or feeding strategies for high genetic merit cows. Whereas the performance of high and average genetic merit cows on two different feeding systems has been presented before (Veerkamp et al. 1995), the aim of this study is to define if some of the advantages of high genetic merit cows persist throughout the first three lactations of a cow's lifetime.