The importance of selective breeding this season

With the breeding season fast approaching, it is time to start making selective decisions when it comes to both the cow and bull used next month.

Being selective with your breeding plan is important, as the decisions made in the coming weeks will either accelerate or dismantle the rate of genetic gain within your herd.

There is no doubt that breeding has become a more complex system on dairy farms, with the days of using dairy genetics across the board now in the past.

Breeding has become a calculated process, with a strong focus on selecting cows for dairy artificial insemination (AI) and using beef straws for the rest.

Being selective with this process and breeding replacements to the best cows in the herd has allowed farms to strive for better dairy stock, pushing performance and farm margins.

As well as that, calf sales have been acting as an important financial buffer on farms, there is no doubt calf sales are a saviour this year, considering the money they are making while milk prices are bottomed out.

However, having quality dairy-beef stock has been a saviour for a number of years, especially when we look back to two and three years ago when Friesian bulls could not be sold.

Even though Friesian calves are selling well this year, the overall picture highlights the need to use more high Dairy Beef Index (DBI), quality beef straws.

Breeding

The first thing that needs to be done this season is calculate how many cows and straws will be needed to get the number of replacements required for the farm.

From there, the next step is looking at how the maiden heifers can fulfil that requirement.

Some farmers may be reluctant to use dairy straws on heifers as they will naturally have a smaller calf, while the heifers more than likely have the highest genetic merit in the herd.

There’s still a big variation in how maiden heifers are served.

Some farms use sexed semen and even synchronisation programmes; others use conventional AI whether it be beef or dairy; and more leave a young bull to mate with the heifers.

However, breeding the maiden heifers to beef sires means the herd is always one generation behind, which makes it harder to improve genetic merit, which may affect the push for solids or fertility.

Another issue with breeding maiden heifers to beef sires is the result of a smaller calf, having a small replacement heifer is manageable as she can add the difference in weight on over a 13-15-month-period.

However, it will be near impossible to make up that difference before selling the calf at around three weeks-of-age, meaning the calf could be 10kg behind in the mart, which will no doubt affect the selling price.

If you are using the maiden heifers for replacements, you need to calculate the amount needed, using the best cows from the herd to bridge the gap for additional replacements.

From here, you will be choosing dairy sires based on what needs improving in the herd, whether that be milk solids, fertility, or health.

Once that is done, careful consideration needs to be placed on your dairy-beef sires too, as the bull choices will have a huge impact on the dairy beef finishers as performance, grade and weight.

Use the DBI to help with your decisions, but it is important to keep calving difficulty in mind when looking at beef traits.

.editor-styles-wrapper .wp-block-acf-related-stories-block {
max-width: 960px !important;
background-color: var(–color-gray-default);
padding-inline: 40px;
padding-top: 8px !important;
padding-bottom: 20px !important;
}