Lifetime yield performance and herd life through nine lactations were examined for 7353 F₁ cows that resulted from crosses of 374 Holstein or Friesian bulls from Canada, Denmark, Israel, New Zealand, Sweden, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the US, and West Germany with Polish Black and White cows. Lifetime traits included number of calvings, days in milk (DIM), days of productive life (DPL), age at last calving, age at disposal, lifetime milk and fat yields, and mean milk and fat yields per DIM . Mean number of calvings was 3.8. Ranking of strains based on means and mixed model solutions demonstrated the superiority of US, Canadian, New Zealand, and Israeli strains for measures of longevity and lifetime performance. For all lifetime traits Polish, Netherlands, and Danish strains ranked lowest. Sire and error components of variance were estimated with a REML procedure. Heritabilities of lifetime milk and fat yields and measures of herd life were low (0.03 to 0.07); heritabilities for mean yield per DIM were 0.22 for milk and 0.19 for fat.