Are we seeing a seismic shift in the dairy industry? Historically, herds have generated Holstein bull calves as a side effect of breeding their cows. Now with sexed semen, the potential is to shift the calf population to heifers. Nothing new here. While visiting several farms last week in Wisconsin two things were noteworthy. First a producer was complaining that he had sent a load of bull calves and received a check for $200. After trucking and commissions, one Holstein bull calf netted $7. While discussing the industry with another large producer (> 10,000 cows), this producer said “We no longer can afford to make Holstein bull calves”. If they want a heifer, they breed with sexed semen, otherwise the cow is bred with beef semen. These calves go into our feed yards. I think we are beginning to see dairy farms that will have major positions in feed yards to capture this value. This means this we will going from a throw-away bull stream to an input stream of the next enterprise.
Just my thoughts after visiting farms last week.
Larry
We’ve been having this discussion with our clients for about two years now. Black bull calves have value. Other don’t. So farms have come up with a list of cows whose calves are not going to become part of the replacement stream and are breeding them with beef semen.
We have been doing this exact thing for several years at Riverview. For full disclosure, Riverview sells beef semen for this purpose. We use only sexed Jersey and sexed Holstein dairy semen and everything else is bred to conventional beef semen. We use Limousin or Lim-Flex beef semen. Currently we breed about half of our dairy cows to dairy and half to beef. The beef calves, we call them BeefBuilders, are raised in our own feedlots or in custom ranches in TX. Here’s a link that tells the story:
http://www.wulfcattle.com/our-beef-on-dairy-experience.html
Daryl, do you know if the feedlots are looking for more animals? I am thinking that through our members of CWT we could contract trailer loads from a few different spots if they had space to take them. You can reply privately but I thought the members might want to think about this. Remember this is on the “General” side of theCWTgroup.
Larry,
The feedlots can take more external animals but I think they really only want dairy-beef crosses from the beef genetics we select. So I think they can put together a deal to sell the semen to the dairies and buy the dairy-beef calves from them. Anyone interested can contact Lauren Osborn- (559) 302-6877, lauren.osborn@wulfcattle.com. She would have all the details. I try to stay as far away from the beef system as I can :)
Hi All,
As we can see from the comments, this has been a significant shift over the past few years. Obviously the timing could not have been better for this shift because of three significant and simultaneous factors: 1) low beef supply ==> strong beef prices, 2) improving fertility across the industry in cows, and 3) gradual, but incremental improvements in the fertility of sexed semen (resulting from several factors). Since the introduction of sexed semen, it seems this has been a ‘no brainer’ for Jersey herds that are not looking to expand. In Holstein herds, genomics seems to have accelerated this as well, because many folks have felt (more) comfortable to use genomic testing to help them figure out which cows and heifers should not be contributing their genes to next year’s heifer calf crop. Beef programs such as Wulf that Daryl highlights and the AI companies have responded by providing dairies with sire fertility and calving ease, along with growth and carcass traits on these sires.
Of course, with this more targeted approach in providing replacements it is important to ensure all of the critical boxes are ticked, beginning with the most important.
1) Continue using the very best dairy bulls to make replacement heifers. This becomes more of a challenge with sexed semen because of more limited production/supply on high demand bulls, and especially on sexed genomic bulls who don’t make units like mature bulls. Due to population dynamics, these bull selections still will have more impact on your future herd genetic levels.
2) Maintain a top notch calf and heifer rearing program to ensure that the investment in genetics can be leveraged fully.
3) Use good info. to decide which cows and heifers to breed to beef. Good information can be solid performance, repro., and health data. Good information can be genomic data. Good information can be a combination, with genomic data on some but not all females. The best cost-benefit here can be different for different herds.
Overall, the genetic stakes are higher today because genomics has accelerated the rate of change – some say by 1.5X! Genetically, it is much easier to fall behind today. With the much faster rates of genetic progress, it also is vital that we work together more across disciplines – genetics, nutrition, repro., udder health/milk quality!!
Are there any who feel they can help their clients/customers further with genetic decision tools?
Marj –