Utilizing beef semen in dairy herds impacts industry

SYCAMORE, Ill. — Utilizing beef semen to breed dairy females and produce beef-on-dairy cross calves is impacting dairy herds in several ways.

“We have been using beef semen in our herd for a couple of reasons,” said Bill Deutsch, who owns a 150-head dairy herd near Sycamore in northern Illinois.

“I shifted so we do not have to raise calves in the middle of winter in the hutches because of labor,” he said. “So, we started breeding our females that calve from Christmastime to March 1 with beef semen, and the calves are sold to the beef grower.”

In addition, Deutsch uses beef semen to breed all the cows on the lower one-third for genetic index in his herd.

“To supplement that we started using sexed semen on the top 20% of the herd, so we have not lost on replacement heifers at all,” the dairyman said about his herd that includes Brown Swiss and Holstein cows.

“It has been nice to have these beef calves,” he said. “The premiums have helped our cash flow.”

In addition, since the dairyman is using sexed semen for his higher-quality cows, he is also increasing the productivity of the entire herd quicker.

“My production has shifted to components — total fat and protein combined — instead of pounds of milk shipped, because I am paid on protein and fat,” Deutsch said. “Lately, I have been breeding a little more for protein because the pay price has shifted to more premiums on protein than fat.”

Cattle Inventory

Over the last 65 years, the national beef herd has been declining for several reasons including drought conditions and the age of cattlemen.

“That created a void of feeder cattle,” said Gavin Staley, technical services veterinarian at Diamond V.

But the beef-on-dairy cross calves have helped fill a good percentage of the void, said Staley during a presentation at World Dairy Expo.

“We have a dairy heifer inventory that is expected to calve of 2.5 million head, which is the lowest in 48 years,” he said. “And the U.S. dairy herd has grown to 9.7 million head which is the highest in 31 years.”

Staley questions what dairy herds will look like in the future with a 26% cull rate.

“Dairymen are going to keep a lot of older cows that require more care and attention,” the veterinarian said.

“We are going to need to keep cows healthier for longer, and it is all about prevention and innate immunity,” he said. “And tied into that is genetics because cows that are able to stay longer in the herd have a genome that allows them to do that.”

With a higher percentage of older cows in a herd, Staley said, he expects the somatic cell counts in the bulk tank will increase.

“We can’t cull the cows like we used to because we don’t have the replacement heifers, and there may be more repeat mastitis cases,” he said.

Animal Health

Therefore, it will be important for dairymen to be really good at detecting potential problems.

“I think we are going to need the activity monitoring a lot more to pick this stuff up,” the veterinarian said.

“Older cows have less and lower intensity heats, lower conception rates, and they are not good candidates for sexed semen,” Staley said.

“I really believe in genomics, but if you do not have enough heifers, it does not matter what their genome is because you need every heifer,” he said. “Genomics work if you have a lot of heifers because you can cull the bottom 20%.”

It will be important for dairymen to focus on heifer health and heifer maturity.

“We need to feed the right milk proteins, spend money on the heifers and pay attention to them,” the veterinarian said. “And we need to weigh the heifers.”

Staley looked at the top dairy herds across the nation and found that these operations do two things.

“They raise mature heifers, and they create and retain healthy mature cows,” he said. “These herds with 100-pound milk production cows do not have 50% cull rates.”

The veterinarian encourages dairymen to determine the reasonable heifer inventory for their herd based on their culling rate.

“You need to start building your heifer inventory today, because it is a three-year process,” Staley said.

“Dairy dynamics have changed fundamentally, and they are not going back anytime soon,” he said. “The new normal replacement rate will be from 26% to 28%, and there will be 12% more older cows that are prone to chronic and subclinical diseases.”