The Moos Room™

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Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. We are talking about using beef on your dairy today. Brad, Emily, and I, just three of us again. We hope you enjoy this episode. Again, we really do want to hear from you. If you have questions, comments, or as you'll hear in the episode anything you disagree with that you'd like us to know about that you disagree with, send them to themoosroom@umn.edu That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M @umn.edu. Any other questions, anything you want to reference, we can always find some more information on extension.umn.edu.
All right, welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. Today we are talking about dairy, cross-beef genetics or using beef on your dairy. Brad is our expert again. He is here to tell us everything we need to know. Emily and I will be questioning him and trying to get him all riled up and angry. Hopefully, you'll get to hear quite a few opinions today that you may or may not agree with but that's the idea.
Brad: I am definitely not an expert on dairy-beef genetics, but I'll give it a go.
Emily: You are an expert on sharing your opinions on dairy-beef genetics, and Joe and I have master's degrees in getting you riled up.
Brad: You are right.
Emily: I think we got this.
Joe: We've got it. I think it's the way to go. To kick everything off, I think we'll just go background first and talk about why did the dairy industry really start using beef genetics?
Brad: That's a good question. There's so many things that you could think about why people use beef genetics. Everybody likes to blame it on sexed semen. I think sexed semen, yes, does have some of the issue with that that has caused more heifers in the dairy world, but some of it is reduced price for beef, dairy bull calves, the price has been reduced quite a lot.
I think back to our Morris dairy herd two, three years ago, bull calves were leaving at $450 and today they're maybe worth $50. Some you can't even give away, that's a problem too. I think there--
Emily: No, I know guys that have had to pay to get somebody to come and take their calves.
Brad: I know and I think that's kind of sad, actually but some can be processing too. Some of these processors aren't set up to take big Holstein steers, they're just too tall, they can't fit in these processing plants. I think there's a lot of things why people have decided to use that, the market has probably dictated that.
Joe: I think there's a lot of different things that happen. Part of it, like you said, is that if you're having to give away calves or pay someone to get rid of them or you can't get rid of them at all, that pushes more sexed semen and that perpetuates everything as well. Is this a new thing, Brad, or is this something we've seen in the past?
Brad: No, I think it's been around for a little bit. I think some people have probably always used some beef genetics in their dairy herds, probably some have used it to get some cows pregnant that they maybe couldn't get pregnant so they just use some, I'll say Angus because that's the one that people used quite a bit in the past. If you think about back in the '60s and '70s, a lot of people bred their dairy herd to beef, they just didn't need all those replacements, calling rates were lower, herds were trying to expand.
They bred the bottom genetic animals to beef. 20% to 30% of dairy animals were bred to beef, really. It's been around a while and it's certainly not a new phenomenon, but it's gained traction in the last few years again.
Joe: That's one of the things that we tend to forget about when we're talking about this whole conversation is that beef calf is supposed to be worth more and that's a lot of the main drive and what gets the most of the press. You're making a lot of early-calling decisions and that is a huge value to the dairy when you can say, I'm raising the least amount of heifers that I absolutely need to because that cost has also skyrocketed to raise a replacement. Then you're deciding very early on before you've invested a lot into trying to get a cow pregnant on who you're going to call and who's not going to be around or you're not going to use their genetics on your dairy anymore.
I think that's a huge piece of it that makes it a big value and it just doesn't seem to come up in conversation very often.
Brad: You think about genomic testing, genomic testing has probably led people to breed animals to beef because if they get a genomic test on an animal, they can try and select the animals that are of lower genetic mirror and breed those to beef so you don't have any offspring off of them. That's probably driven, genomic testing has maybe driven some use towards beef as well.
Joe: Go ahead, Em.
Emily: Oh, thank you, so kind. Are there also just reproductive benefits to this because I've heard anecdotally on farms, guys be like, "Hey, I put Holstein semen in [unintelligible 00:05:53] times, couldn't get a red back, just threw this in and that's what kept. Are there other reproductive-type benefits or things to keep in mind when doing dairy-beef crossing?
Brad: Now you want me to put my PhD hat on, don't you?
Emily: That was the goal.
Brad: There's been no real good research out there that says breeding, say, a Holstein to another breed will have improved fertility. When people started crossbreeding in the early time period with Jersey and stuff, we didn't really see improvements in fertility of that Holstein cow bred to another breed. You see it in the crossbred. There's been Holstein semen, Jersey semen, all that purebred semen, it's good quality semen. There's nothing wrong with it. It's more of the cows that have the issue than per se the semen. It's hard to know but I'm not sure that there's a huge benefit. At least, I haven't seen it if you breed an animal and it's going to magically get pregnant faster if you breed it to another breed.
Joe: You think about what's happening in that situation where you start breeding with Holstein, Holstein, Holstein, Holstein, and then you decide to switch to beef, what you've done is just increased your days in milk and she would have been more likely to get pregnant no matter what. You switch to beef because you're making a culling decision and it just appears like that conception rate is higher but really, it's just a cow factor.
I don't think it would have mattered if you put Holstein in her that time or beef. It's just that beef is what got her pregnant because of where she wasn't milking and because she was more likely to get pregnant anyway.
Emily: Well then, I'm going to put my pot stirrer hat on since we're all wearing our hats and just point out that a lot of you just dispelled things that a lot of farmers believe like, oh yes, this other breed will just, that would be the magic bullet there.
Joe: We just don't have the data.
Emily: Get ready for some hate mail to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Joe: Yes, themoosroom@umn.edu.
Brad: Sometimes I think that too, if you throw it, it's like, oh, she gets pregnant, maybe we should do that more and it's cow-specific, it's tough to really tell.
Joe: I would call that, I don't think we have any data either way, so it could be true, it might not be. I tend to leans that it's not true. Conception rates on these Holstein bulls that are from these genetic companies, they're going to be high, they have to be, real simple wouldn't beat around.
Brad: That's right because he's breeding a lot of purebreds too.
Joe: When we look at a dairy animal and we look at the end, we're looking at the packer, we're looking at the packing plant, and Brad already brought this up a little bit, they're too big, we know that and that that becomes an issue for processing. One of the things that we know is that we know they're going to be big. The thing that I always come back to is when we ask the question or we're talking about these beef on dairy cross animals, they should be worth more but the reasons they're worth more I think is where we need to look because a Holstein is actually a really good beef animal. A purebred Holstein makes really, really good meat.
I'm sure you've seen that, Brad, you've done some studies on some of the carcass traits where you're looking at marbling and things like that.
Brad: The Holstein steer will go primer choice more often than not so the beef quality is really good.
Joe: Not only does the packer know what they can pay for him, knows how to use them, knows how they fit in the system, everything is a known when it comes to Holstein for the most part, and you can argue about calf health because it's never known coming off a dairy sometimes.
The reason that we're talking about that is because we have to highlight why a beef crossed dairy animal should be worth more. Can you go into that a little bit, Brad? Tell us why should it be worth more than a Holstein cow?
Brad: Probably the big thing is rate of gain, you get much faster gain. You can probably finish that dairy beef or beef calf much faster than say, a Holstein steer. If you're thinking some of the other breeds, whether that's a Jersey steer or a Guernsey steer or a Brown Swiss steer, it takes a long time. It takes much longer to finish those and that costs money, labor, maintenance, feed. The faster you can get them to market with the most carcass yield really wins.
That's, I think, with these dairy beef crosses, they can just get to market faster and on the same terms as a beef calf. It really doesn't affect them a whole lot.
Joe: What about hide color and all that in the value, is that really a thing that we look at being a piece of the value anymore?
Brad: Oh, boy, you want to open a can of worms on hide color?
Joe: Oh, yes, of course.
Emily: Everybody likes their meat from black animals.
Brad: I think that's what the perception out there is that a black-hided animal gets more money at the packer and that's maybe possible here in the Midwest where a lot of things tend to be sort of black-hided, whether it's Angus or Limousin or Simmental or whatever your breed that you can make black is. I think if you go to other parts in the country, I don't think that it's all that. Obviously black has a distinction but it's not all that crazy.
I was in California a few months ago and you go out there and there's a lot of red cattle and all their colored cattle that aren't black that do just fine on the rail. I don't know, it's hard to tell whether black is losing its luster a little bit. I think the problem is, is that we've all decided that black gets paid for more so that's just what we do.
Joe: What you see is at the packer. The packer probably doesn't necessarily care what hide color there is because once it's off they're just worried about the carcass. I think where you see maybe some difference in price might be when you're looking at selling a group of calves at the barn because we've started to stress uniformity so much and color is just one of those things you can pick out right away.
I think it potentially can affect you if you're going to be selling to a feeder or a feedlot but the packer, I don't think the packer cares at all. They want performance on that carcass, and I don't think they care if the hide is black or red or white or black and white.
Brad: That's right, they're looking for things to go choice or higher and if you can a red animal to do that, hey, more power to you. Jersey steers will go prime if you feed them correctly and give them time, you can get with all that marbling and a Jersey beef steer, wow, taste yummy.
Joe: Absolutely. It might be the best-tasting steak I've had is from a Jersey.
Emily: I always like the Jersey steers, my brother raises steers and that's always been my request like, "When you get a Jersey, put me down for a quarter." What I was going to say too on the black cattle thing being popular, I think that's really on the consumer side, an example of really effective marketing.
When you think of when you go to a restaurant and you see the menu, it's like, oh, this is a certified Black Angus, New York strip. What does that really mean? Who knows? Does the consumer know? Does anybody know? I don't know.
Brad: The waitress doesn't know either.
Emily: The marketing though is you make it sound good and appealing and more important. I totally missed what you said, Brad, but I'm sure it was nothing good.
Brad: It was important. Have you ever gone into a restaurant and asked the waitress if it's certified Angus beef, what breed of animal it is, they just stare at you. Yes, I am the guy that will ask what breed of steak it is in the restaurant.
Emily: You are also the guy that gets his foods spit on, Brad.
Joe: It's probably true in some cases. I like the restaurants where we go in and it's already broken down for you by breed. I think that's pretty fun. I've been to a couple where it's actually broken down Holstein, Jersey, Angus. That's fun to see on the menu that someone's taking the time to look at it and knows enough about it to do that.
We're getting closer to the real question for today. We're not quite there yet but we're getting there and we're saving it because it's going to get Brad really riled up. Let's ask another one that's just about on par with that one. How much should a producer be spending on beef semen for their dairy to achieve high quality?
Brad: Emily has good comments about how much you should spend on semen.
Emily: I would just say it seems that some people maybe have the attitude that if I'm a dairy producer but I'm going to breed some to beef, I just need beef semen. Whatever, and they just get the cheapest thing or they're not really thinking about what they're using, any of that, they're just picking it up. Not all semen is created equal, I have learned that in my life. I think that more thought needs to go into making the decision than this one is the cheapest because the semen you get what you pay for.
Brad: I think if people are dairy producers looking for semen, they want something that's cheap and probably Angus or something that's black-hided which Simmental or those are probably the two breeds that at least in Limousin, in the upper Midwest that we're using. The dairy producers aren't thinking about carcass quality when they get the beef semen to use on their dairy animals and they probably should be because in the end they're going to get paid for that if they raise them on their own.
I think most dairy producers are in the, I'm just going to breed it, make calves, leaving a week after it's born anyway so why do I care? That's probably not the right attitude to have.
Joe: That might have worked when we're talking 5 to 10 years ago as everything was getting kicked off. You see that everybody is just looking for a black-hided animal and they don't care what it looks phenotypically or if it looks like a dairy animal, it's just a different color but now that the market is flooded enough with animals like that, that buyers can be choosy, they can be picky now. They can say, "I don't want that animal that looks like just a black Holstein or a black Jersey." They want an animal that looks like a beef animal because that is what they're looking at to say, "I'm going to get that 13% more feed efficiency. I'm going to have the animal beyond on feed 100 days less than a Holstein and it's going to dress out at 3% higher dressing percentage."
That only comes when you get into that quality semen. I'm going to be controversial because I'm going to put a number on it. I think the number is somewhere between $8 and $15 semen. I think if you get below that, you can probably get below 8 but it's probably because you're buying a huge volume. I think that that's the sweet spot for me between $8 and $15 a straw is where I like to see it.
If you get much higher than that, I don't know if there's a benefit but if you get lower than that, you're not going to see the quality and the consistency you need to build your reputation and actually have a market for those animals.
Brad: I agree. Well, I won't go off on my soapbox about how cheap I think dairy semen is in the in the US either, that's not what you see in other parts of the world. Semen has just become a cheap commodity on a dairy that doesn't necessarily matter much. It's always tough.
Joe: Let's get to this big question. How, Brad, do I choose what breed to use? How am I going to choose what beef breed?
Brad: Oh, yes, good question.
Emily: Belted Galloway.
Brad: That's probably the number one question that everybody's asking everywhere is what breed to use and of all of the farmers that I talked with, I don't think they're convinced that any breed is the best either. I think they see many differences whether you have Angus or Limousin or Simmental or Hereford, it's just so different. We should either start talking with feedlots to see what is happening.
I'll give you an example. In our research center, I'm breeding about 40% of the dairy animals to beef and it's Limousin. Why Limousin? Because that's what I can get from the semen salesman at a reasonable price. They have a lot of Limousin semen here in Minnesota, other places not so much, but that's what I have. Somebody convinced me that I shouldn't use Simnental because I might be worried about calving ease. I don't know maybe Angus will work, Hereford too. It's hard to tell.
I'm using Limousin and we're selling those bull calves off at 60 days of age to a person that has a feedlot and he's interested in looking at many different breeds. He's trying to figure out what breed works best in his feedlot so it's like, oh, hey, I've got some Limousin cross dairy calves, maybe those are something that he's going to explore to see what feeds out the best. Because we have Limousin Holsteins and we have Limousin crossbred out of crossbred dairy cows. I think all of these feedlot producers are still trying to figure out what's the best breed as well.
Joe: I think genetic companies have just made some assumptions about what is best based on volume of sales, we'll say it, we'll call it that way, but there isn't really all that much data out there that's available to the public to see what is better, what these carcass traits look like. I'm convinced that I honestly don't know if it matters right now because we don't have any of those answers. I personally think that if you're going to start breeding beef on a dairy and it's going to be a niche market for you or a way to diversify the farm, you just need to pick one and stick with it because you're trying to build a reputation around selling these animals to a feedlot and they want quality and consistency, consistency being a big piece of it.
At this point, I'm pretty convinced you just pick one. There's a couple things, almost close to Joe soapbox time, but one of the things that you have to consider is, I don't care what breed it is, the bull you pick should be homozygous polled. There's no reason to go with a beef breed if you still have to dehorn, it doesn't make any sense to me. Homozygous polled bull and then calving ease is real. Maintain your birth weight as much as you can but then also account for calving ease. Those are the only real two things that I think matter right now because that's all we really have answers on.
Emily: It sounds like both of you are arguing the fact that, perhaps, yes, we'll be able to know based on breed, what's the best choice, what's the best option. It really sounds like management is what people need to be focused on. That's what's going to make or break you. I think that's true in any situation with whatever type of livestock you have. You can have the best genetics in the world but if you're not managing those animals well, they are not going to perform at the level you want them to. That's what I'm hearing in these different things and even just the type of reproductive and genetics decisions you make, that's all management.
I'm interested, Brad, in the person that you have, buying your full cows from the dairy and just that he sounds like he is looking at different breeds and they are all being matched the same way. He may find something.
Brad: I agree and I've had these conversations with other producers in the Midwest about trying different breeds so they can raise them all under their conditions, so they can actually tell what breed works for them. I think just because this person uses Simmental doesn't mean that Simmental will work for another producer. It certainly depends on the genetics of your cows too, we haven't talked about that.
Another factor that I don't think people think about. If you use beef semen on a dairy animal, what do you get? You get 50% heifer calves, roughly. You have all these dairy cross beef animals and a whole bunch of them are heifers. Those do not feed out like a steer either, so there's a lot of those things to consider too. I think that's one thing that's weighing on people's minds too is, whether they implant or do whatever, how do I get these dairy cross beef heifers to grow and get to market.
Joe: I think that comes back to the quality consideration, though, because I think if you're going to have a harder time with those heifers, those beef cross heifers, the lower quality you get. The higher quality you get, the easier time you'll have because the more they look like beef, to me that that's really the big difference. I could see definitely struggling with there are beef cross calves that are heifers if they look like Holsteins.
If they look like beef, there's so many markets for that. When I was in Nebraska, we visited a couple feedlots that were 50,000 head apiece and they didn't feed anything but heifers. It's beef, they got to look like beef.
Brad: There's differences in sires, we know that too. I've used three different Limousin sires in our herd and you can see some differences in the sires and they're not all the same. Those cross calves are not all the same. They look good and they do well but they're a little different.
Joe: I think we're struggling to figure out how to feed them as well sometimes. I don't know if you've seen that, Brad, but I know that feedlots are looking at it. They missed the Holsteins because they knew exactly how to feed them and we're still going through some growing pains on how to feed these crossbreds and how to get them to market quickly and grade well and all of that. I don't know if you're seeing that at all, Brad.
Brad: Oh, yes, I think so and that goes back to Emily's point, it's all starts with management. That's really what it is. If you have good management, you should be able to get these dairy beef crosses to grow well and get to market fast.
Joe: I think Emily makes a perfect point with management. It goes all the way back to calf health too. These feedlots and wherever you're marketing, they don't want calves that have health issues. Chronics are probably one of the most expensive things that can happen to a feedlot. When you're looking at it, it all goes back to our previous episodes on calf health and scours and how to prevent that and how to manage colostrum. That's all going to matter just as much as what breed or if not more than what breed or genetics you pick to cross these animals with. We didn't give anybody an answer, did we?
Brad: No, we didn't and I'm sure everybody will be disappointed. They wanted to hear the magic breed that we should be using.
Emily: If they're coming here for answers to anything, then we have them fooled pretty well.
Joe: Yes, that's true, that's true.
Brad: Like I said, I've used Limousin, but I thought about going to something else maybe storytime. When I was in California, some of the herds were using Beefmaster. We had some Beefmaster steaks one night out at the dairy and they were delicious. It was like, maybe we should use Beefmaster or something else. I think any breed will produce a good quality carcass that has steaks that are good.
Joe: I think maybe it's actually a good thing that we don't give everyone an answer. Pick one you like and go with it.
Brad: We don't want all the dairy cross calves to be all one breed, it would be unfortunate.
Emily: Variety is the spice of life.
Brad: Sure is.
Joe: It just opens the door for everybody, if you want to use Hereford, if that's your thing and you're like Brad and Herefords are your ticket, use Hereford. See how it goes and stick with it and you'll find a market.
Brad: I've actually been thinking Gelbvieh lately, but I don't know.
Joe: Gelbvieh, the balancer.
Brad: Yes, exactly.
Emily: Let's get weird.
Joe: Why not? Why not?
Brad: There's lots of options, lots of options. We just need more research and we need to fund my research so I can figure out what's the best breed, that's all, we'll figure it out.
Emily: I feel like another research project is just what you need right now, Brad.
Brad: Exactly. That's what I need.
Emily: I would imagine you're just swamped.
Brad: Hey, I'm willing to do, I like doing dairy beef research, and I've done some in the past and I want to do more.
Joe: Good. Any other burning questions that we can think of, Em, to get Brad all fired up?
Emily: As my mother would say, questions, concerns, scathing rebuttal.
Joe: Hopefully we get some of those in emails.
Emily: Yes, that's themoosroom@umn.edu.
Joe: Let's wrap it up. I think we talked long enough for there's going to be plenty on tape here. Like Emily said just now if you have questions, comments, scathing rebuttals, send them to themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E M-O-O-S R-O-O-M @umn.edu. Thank you for listening. We'll catch you next episode. When you're hustling and you're trying to not get killed by mom, people can't count to two well.
Emily: That's appropriate enough to keep in there, right?
Joe: Oh, yes, I think so.
Emily: That's going to be my new trademark. I'm going to be the weird farm safety lady that [unintelligible 00:29:37]
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