The Moos Room™

00;00;13;08 - 00;00;39;13
Brad
Welcome to the Moos Room. It's a beautiful fall day here in western Minnesota. Actually, harvest is going quite well. We finally were done with our corn silage in early October, so it took us a little bit longer. It's been quite wet here, but it's been dry for the last week or so. I think there's a lot of soybeans, some corn starting to come out of the fields out here in the western part of the state.

00;00;39;13 - 00;01;14;11
Brad
We also have a lot of sugar beets. So sugar beet harvest has been kind of crazy as well. So hopefully everyone has a safe harvest this fall. But one thing I wanted to talk about today was genomic testing of cattle. I think it was recently on my mind has been on my mind for a little bit. I kind of want to talk a little bit about some of the experience that we've had with genomic testing, how we're using it on some of the farms we're working with, and where you might be able to get genomic testing done with animals.

00;01;14;13 - 00;01;48;08
Brad
Well, last week I was in South Dakota. I was there for some research meetings with some researchers around the US, and we usually do some farm tours, talk about some of the research that we're all working on together. Some of the interesting things I think the biggest thing is the farm tours, and that's really what I get a lot out of, because I can understand what's going on on farms, talk to the producers, see what they're interested in, kind of really get some ideas about what's happening.

00;01;48;11 - 00;02;13;07
Brad
In one of the farms we were on was, I think, about 2000 cows, roughly, and one of the herd managers had mentioned about genomic testing that they genomic test everything. I believe they're working with an auto genetics herd and doing all of this testing and of course they had lots of Holsteins. They were also using beef so Angus to breed some of their cattle, and they were using Jersey as well.

00;02;13;07 - 00;02;35;15
Brad
So they were doing some crossbreeding, mostly Holstein and Beef. And I asked the herd manager, I said, well, what are you actually doing with the genomic testing that you get back? And he said, well, we're just using it to determine which animals get bred to beef. And that was intriguing to me because I know how much genomic testing cost.

00;02;35;17 - 00;02;58;18
Brad
And we'll talk about that here in a little bit. Somewhere between 30 and $40 per animal. And I thought, is it really worth genomic testing your herd just to figure out who to breed to beef? In my opinion, it's not worth that. I think you could easily look at parent marriage to figure out which animals you can breed to beef.

00;02;58;20 - 00;03;25;20
Brad
It's quite simplistic. So that got me thinking about during the whole tour. You know, we were where we were doing this in the maternity area, and I'd asked about genomic testing to the manager of the maternity area. And then we were walking through the barns and talking to another herd manager. And I sort of posed the question again about genomic testing and what that might be useful for, and why might they be doing it?

00;03;25;22 - 00;03;49;12
Brad
And I got a little bit different answer than what I had heard in the maternity room. This time, of course, was still who to breed the beef. Definitely. That was one of the questions was who do we breed to beef? And we're going to use genomic testing to do that. I think the other answer that I got was a little more in-depth, that they're looking at it from a production side, trying to increase components.

00;03;49;12 - 00;04;21;11
Brad
They're shipping some milk to a specialty cheese co-op, trying to increase protein. So looking at the pitas for protein. Also looking at it from a health perspective. So trying to look at the genomics of of health traits for these animals. And the biggest thing that they were doing is they were using their own index. They had created their own index based on the TOS, the traits that they wanted to select for.

00;04;21;13 - 00;04;44;04
Brad
And they were using the genomic data to be able to do that. So they were using it to actually really make a better herd genetically by obviously breeding the low end animals to beef, but then trying to improve the genetics of those animals by using genomic testing. But they weren't using very many bulls. It's kind of the bull of the day.

00;04;44;06 - 00;05;05;05
Brad
So there's a lot of that going on. And the other factor I heard was inbreeding helping control inbreeding in their herd. Obviously that's a concern we really don't talk about much with genomic testing is how can we I shouldn't say reduce inbreeding because that might not be the case, but how can we help lower the increase in inbreeding that we're seeing in a lot of herds?

00;05;05;05 - 00;05;24;14
Brad
So that was probably the biggest thing that I, I got from these herds was why would you spend a lot of the money to do this testing to just use for beef. I think the other one was looking at parentage, and we'll talk about parentage here in a little bit. I got a few examples from another herd that we genotyped, and one of our herds here at the university, where we genotype some things.

00;05;24;17 - 00;05;51;03
Brad
So let's talk about genomic testing where you actually get it from and and what might you do. It's pretty easy. I use Neogen I've genomically tested with Zoetis as well before. Probably the biggest reason I when we started genomic testing back in 2017. So we've been doing this for almost eight years. I started with the Holsteins there. At the time, the Zoetis people said, well, we don't genotype crossbred.

00;05;51;03 - 00;06;27;20
Brad
So I basically genotype some Holsteins with Zoetis and that was it. I didn't do it. So Neogen was able to genotypes across breeds for me. So that's why I've gone on with Neogen and I haven't done really much with. So I just genetics. Although working on some of the projects that we do, I share a graduate student and looking at feed efficiency of dairy heifers at our Whisker Research Center, and they're being genotyped with us because we're interested in the calf health traits that that they provide in the calf wellness traits and cow wellness traits as well.

00;06;27;21 - 00;07;05;00
Brad
But with Neogen, I'm basically using Identity Select. It's a comprehensive genomic test that includes your standard betas of production. You know, fat, protein net, merit feed saved, residual feed intake. It gives you type traits. It also does the health traits from CDC. So milk fever does ketosis mastitis a bunch of fertility traits that we use. You know gestation length early first calving gives you all the haplotype status of these animals and then calculates all of the type traits.

00;07;05;02 - 00;07;32;16
Brad
I've also used it for A2 testing. That's probably the one of the big reasons that I have used it was for looking at the A2 status of our animals, whether they're A1 or A2 or A1, A2. And recently I started genomic testing the animals for horned or pulled to look at that status. You know, we've used some pull genetics in our herd.

00;07;32;18 - 00;07;59;14
Brad
And it's not always easy to figure out who who's pulled. And so I've been using that. So what what what is my cost. So I just recently submitted some genomic samples end of September here $37 for the genomic test, an additional $5 for A2 status. So that's $42. And I did a couple horned test for animals that were maybe had some pull genetics.

00;07;59;14 - 00;08;33;27
Brad
And I wanted to see if they were actually come back as pulled or not. So that was an additional ten bucks. So about $42 is really what I pay for genomic testing on these animals. I think, you know, everybody has their own genomic index that they use. Zoetis promotes DWP or Dairy Wellness profit Neogen. Just recently released their lifetime dairy dollars that incorporates production, health, fertility, longevity and functional type.

00;08;34;00 - 00;09;03;05
Brad
Obviously it says producers who use lifetime dairy dollars can increase lifetime milk yield, lower vet costs have better fertility and increase longevity and reduce call rate. For me, predominantly using, merit or cheese merit in some of these genomic tests that I get back. And I've also used it for beef and dairy testing to look at a genetic scores for average daily gain, carcass weight, marbling, things like that.

00;09;03;07 - 00;09;37;24
Brad
Those are $17, as well, if you do beef on dairy testing. You know, I talked about that in a previous episode. I'm not sure really what I got out of it. I tested them to see what would happen, and it kind of did okay. But I continue to test here with with Neogen. I think one of the benefits of testing with so at us is you get the calf wellness traits, counts on dairy cattle breeding in the US is going to release calf traits here very soon on scours and respiratory disease.

00;09;37;27 - 00;10;15;12
Brad
But this awareness genetics has a calf wellness traits, cow wellness traits. They have their own dairy wellness profit index that includes fertility, nutrition, production, animal welfare, antibiotic stewardship which is somatic cell count. You can also do a two testing with that as well. Interesting. Looking at some of the new zoetis, information you can they have a new product called herd a T it's the first and only commercially available genomic test specifically for Holstein Jersey cross spreads.

00;10;15;14 - 00;10;39;11
Brad
So you can genotype your Jersey Holstein cross spreads. And look at that. Frankly, I'm not interested in the Jersey Holstein cross spreads. I have a lot of other cross breads that were in our herd. And we'll talk about that in a second. And they do other things as well. They do a two coat color pulled, the same as what I get as well test, genetic vision.

00;10;39;11 - 00;11;12;08
Brad
So you can do, testing with genetic visions. If you are a customer of genetics, you can use, they have a, vision plus 75, which offers 53 traits for milk, protein markers and 24 additional markers. So it includes the standard production, fertility, longevity cap of casein. So a2 status, bunch of recessive traits within Holsteins or other breeds.

00;11;12;08 - 00;11;37;09
Brad
Does all of the haplotypes, looks at coat color as well. And that's 34, 50 or about $35 for doing some testing with genetic visions. So if you think about it, it's really they're all about the same for price when it comes down to it. So let's talk about interesting a couple case studies. So here's a couple case studies.

00;11;37;12 - 00;12;04;06
Brad
So we're doing a project where we're genomic testing animals cows heifers and calves on I believe eight farms, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa that we're working with on a project. We're just starting to get those genomic results back in one herd was quite interesting. Very small herd of cows. This was a grazing herd that we were working with.

00;12;04;11 - 00;12;33;06
Brad
And the producer, that, young producer that had got these animals knew a little bit about them, but not much. There's a lot of unidentified animals, not really sure what breeds they are, you know, kind of, a mixture of everything and really trying to figure out what that is. I think most of the producers that we're working with here that were genomic testing, they are very interested in the A2 status.

00;12;33;08 - 00;12;55;14
Brad
I think A2 is their main reason. I think that's a lot of the reason why some of these farmers were willing to work with us and have us genotype their animals was because they were interested in the A2 status. And of course we were going to provide that back to them. So A2 status is one of the most important factors that these farms were interested in genomic testing.

00;12;55;16 - 00;13;20;24
Brad
It wasn't the PTA was wasn't sire identification. Not much else, but A2 was a big one. Let's kind of go through this a little bit to both these animals. Some interesting things that I found from this 40 cow herd. So we didn't really know much about the sires, the parentage of these animals. I think out of the 40 we knew about five sires.

00;13;20;24 - 00;13;51;09
Brad
Out of those, four of them were correct. One was wrong. One, the producer thought it was a Jersey sired animal. It's actually Guernsey sired the maternal grandsire is Guernsey to Guernsey Dam. So I thought it was a jersey, but it's actually Guernsey. Probably more Guernsey genetics. In this herd than this farmer had suspected, I guess. So I'm finding a lot of Jersey genetics, some Guernsey genetics.

00;13;51;11 - 00;14;21;26
Brad
There's some German brown Swiss that were used, like a brown Swiss Holstein cross. A couple brown Swiss animals in some jersey. And it really identified all of these animals. You know, we didn't have any sire information. And it was helpful to identify what the genetics were. Some of the animals came back with no genomic sire. They found a maternal grandsire for these animals, but no sire.

00;14;21;28 - 00;14;42;25
Brad
And I suspect that those were herd bulls, that wherever these animals came from, somebody had used a herd bull. And it's, you know, genomic testing is not going to pick up herd bulls, that are sires of animals. So that's the unfortunate part of this is you don't have the sires of those animals, but we can pick up the maternal grandsire.

00;14;42;25 - 00;15;04;08
Brad
So it looks like we've picked up a lot of the maternal grand sires of those animals, but no, sire. So somebody probably just threw a bunch of herd bulls in, to breed their heifers and, again, generate these animals. So, that was the the interesting part about all of this. If you think about the A2 status of these animals.

00;15;04;10 - 00;15;24;29
Brad
So we had 40 animals A2 tested, about half of them were A2, A2 there were two of them were still a1 A1. So those were Holstein animals. So that was an interesting. Well, the producer do with these. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what his plan is for A2 status of these animals. I think it's good to know.

00;15;24;29 - 00;15;48;28
Brad
And maybe he'll start breeding more with, a2 a two bulls or bulls that are only a two A2 to sort of weed out the rest of the the A1 genes in his herd. Now, what if I look at the genetics of these animals? If I look at net merit, the average net merit of all 40 of these animals was -346.

00;15;49;01 - 00;16;15;13
Brad
Some were positive. Obviously that's an average. There was a few of them that were very negative, -1000 merit. Those were some animals that were no sire ID with them. Obviously when you get a lot of different breeds in here, it's kind of difficult to determined and look at the index and really see what's going on. Average fertility DPR 1.4.

00;16;15;13 - 00;16;42;08
Brad
So all of us animals were very positive for fertility. So he's got a pretty good herd with good fertile genetics, somatic cell score. Another interesting 13.02. So that's about average for the breed, the health traits kind of all over the board. Some were good, some were not so good. I look at that. So PTA for type -1.8.

00;16;42;10 - 00;17;09;18
Brad
So obviously when you get a lot of cross breads in here, are you really getting good representation of type or production genetics. But most of these animals were crossbred. And you know, how can you use that information. Frankly, I'm still trying to figure that out myself on how we can use the information from cross spreads in genetic improvement programs for for farmers.

00;17;09;25 - 00;17;37;14
Brad
But what about our other little case study here from our herd? So I just sent in some genomic samples of some heifers this fall that we had him, working on this pulled genetics study that we're doing. So trying to determine that some genotyping these animals a little early. So I sent in some samples, 17 animals. If I look at some animals that I know, one of them's -908 net merit.

00;17;37;17 - 00;18;02;16
Brad
This poor little heifer born in September, she's a Normandy sired animal. So they're really not. They don't have the genomics or genetic information for Normandy. Montpellier. Do you know I have some. Might be the yard animals in this group there. -600. Net merit, -800 net merit. The Normandy's or last. They're all 900. Net merit or less. So, you know, do I really look at them genetics.

00;18;02;16 - 00;18;26;27
Brad
Do I believe these net values for crossbred animals. Absolutely not. I don't believe them at all. We don't have genotypes in the US. They're just, I'm not really sure where they're calculating those where I know we're they're probably basing it off of a Holstein, animals. And it's, unfortunate that we can't get good, genomic evaluations for crossbred.

00;18;26;29 - 00;18;54;00
Brad
Of course, we get good genomic evaluations for Jersey Holstein crosses, but that's about it in the US. And they're obviously using those. You know, I look at it from a, you know, if we consider net merit of these animals, let's see. My highest net merit animal is 691. That is Gino source captain daughter. So top bull in the breed.

00;18;54;02 - 00;19;37;12
Brad
Mr.. Highest for lifetime, $3 as well, which is a neogen index. You know, my crossbred zero -1000 for lifetime dairy dollars as well. If I look at this little captain daughter positive for milk and fat, good for fertility, good for conception rate, good for longevity, good for the health traits. -1.2 Peta for type. Poor little Holstein got minus type, but she's going to produce well, if I look at these Normandy crosses that I have eight minus six, minus seven, -6.6, I don't believe that it's animals are not minus seven points and type again cross breads.

00;19;37;14 - 00;19;59;13
Brad
But of all our of our A2 status, you know, I don't really have much A1 A1 genetics left in our herd. A couple older cows, if I look at these 17, 12 of them are a2, a2. So about 60%, maybe 70% of them are a2, A2 again, still have some a1, a1, a1. Again, I still have some a1 a2 genetics.

00;19;59;15 - 00;20;20;17
Brad
And those here there's some Montpelier, just a couple Holsteins that are there, some purebred, some crossbred, ones that I genotype for pulled one obviously came back as pulled because I knew it was pulled. I use homozygous pull daughter, but I was interested in, bull or this little heifer calf out of a pulled cow or pulled. Damn.

00;20;20;19 - 00;20;54;22
Brad
She did not transmit the pulled genetics to this little animal. So that's unfortunate as we go on. But kind of an idea about, genomics and where we're going at all of our ID is pretty good. I didn't have any issues with sires or kind of oopses when I first started genomic testing. Probably found about a 15% MRD rate in our animals, which was alarming to me, but we've kind of corrected most of that done much better recordkeeping, to get us through those things.

00;20;54;25 - 00;21;13;08
Brad
So what about genomic testing? Should you do it? Should you not do it? Where does that leave us? If you're just going to use it for deciding who to breed to beef, I'm not sure that it's worth that. So what about putting genomic results into practice and how you can use them for managing your heard, what you can use it for heifer selection and culling.

00;21;13;11 - 00;21;50;27
Brad
You can identify your genetically superior heifers to retain as replacements. Obviously, you can either make early decisions to sell some of those or breed the lower ranking heifers to beef bulls, which you could potentially save on rearing costs and kind of maximize the value of each pregnancy that you get. You can use them for strategic breeding. Obviously, sire selection is a big plus, so you can use the genetic information to select sires that will complement the strength and weakness of your animals in your herd.

00;21;50;27 - 00;22;12;28
Brad
Obviously, sex semen is expensive, so you can use sex semen on your highest ranking heifers to ensure that your next generation of replacements has your best genetics. Maybe you want to start using conventional semen again and utilize some of those on maybe the mid-tier animals, and then beef for the bottom ones, which comes in on the B fund.

00;22;12;28 - 00;22;48;23
Brad
Dairy parentage verification. You know, genomic testing can confirm the sire in the dam of each calf, which are useful for effective genetic management. So it will pick out the the sires, the dams that you have, just like we did with this one herd that didn't really have much identification. I think the biggest, one of the biggest reasons for using genomic testing can help with managing inbreeding levels in your herd, which obviously can negatively impact performance, fertility, but really managing inbreeding.

00;22;48;23 - 00;23;10;07
Brad
Deciding who to breed the beef. Maybe you want to start some crossbreeding programs. If you're using a mating program, or trying to figure out what bulls to use in your herd so you can effectively minimize and manage inbreeding. So that's probably some of the big things to use. A2 status. You know, we don't really talk too much about that.

00;23;10;09 - 00;23;34;16
Brad
I don't think it's promoted as much. But there's a group that are using that. I'm going to start using the A2 status in our animals, because I'm going to start processing some of our own milk. So we're going to have our own A2 line. I can separate off the cows that I know that are a2, a2, and we can have an all exclusive A2 butter, ice cream, milk, whatever we decide to do.

00;23;34;19 - 00;23;57;26
Brad
So I think A2, A2 definitely is one of the advantages for genomic testing. Well, hopefully I provided a little information on genomic testing, some little case studies. Why you might want to use genomic testing. We're going to keep doing that here. Because I'm interested in the genomic values, interested in trying to figure out this genomic evaluation for cross breads other than Jersey and Holstein.

00;23;57;28 - 00;24;23;06
Brad
And we'll march forward. So if you have any comments, questions, scathing rebuttals about my genomic testing and genomic testing opinions, feel free to contact me at the newsroom. That's GMO s r o m that, instead of you. Or you can find us on the web at University of Minnesota Livestock Extension or UMW Cross Dairy on the internet and Instagram.

00;24;23;06 - 00;24;27;12
Brad
And with that, I hope you have a great week. Eat.