Maximise dairy profits with beef semen

Improved breeding technologies and practices have resulted in many dairies ending up with more replacement heifers than they need. To add value to surplus animals, farmers can use beef semen on some of their cows. Glenneis Kriel explains what this process entails, and how it should be approached and implemented.

- Glenneis Kriel

Two remarkable scientific developments, namely sexed semen and genomic evaluation (DNA analysis), have proved hugely beneficial to dairies in recent years, thanks to the way they improve selection.

Rebekah Mast, associate vice-president of genetic dairy solutions and talent development at World Wide Sires and Select Sires, explains that genomic evaluations improve the accuracy of genetic predictions, thereby accelerating genetic gains, while sexed semen gives better control over the number of female animals produced, enabling farmers to be more intensive in their selections.

Mast was speaking at the Dairy Management Consulting conference held in August at Durbanville in the Western Cape.

Indeed, so successful are these techniques, that many dairies today end up with an excess of heifers, which then have to be culled.

According to Mast, using sexed semen on a cow increases her chance of producing a heifer to 90%, compared with 50% with conventional semen. Improved calf-rearing systems, in turn, ensure that 90% of these heifers make it to first lactation. With sexed semen, this translates into about 80 replacement heifers in a 100-cow herd, in comparison with only 40 with conventional semen. "Improved efficiencies have actually created new problems for us, with the average dairy now sitting with a culling rate of 40%. Most heifers, in effect, don't make it beyond the third lactation, when cows become most profitable, because farmers are eager to use the new genetics coming into the herd," she explains.

Fortunately, the solution to this problem is already here: the strategic use of beef semen on some of the cows.

Beef-dairy crosses, Mast points out, are sold from one day to one week old in the US, with prices ranging from US$50 (about R860) to US$250 (R4 300), depending on the market, type of cross and the buyer's requirements.