The Moos Room™

00;00;11;03 - 00;00;39;00
Brad
And welcome to The Moos Room A wonderful spring day in western Minnesota. The grass is actually starting to green up a little bit. Kind of getting excited with some projects and virtual fencing and some other grazing projects that are going on this summer. So I don't know. Usually we start grazing about the 10th or so of May rough, so it's only six weeks away.

00;00;39;03 - 00;01;03;11
Brad
So I think grazing is going to start coming a lot sooner than what maybe I want it to, or maybe that I'm ready for. But last we'll have the cows out on grass and we still have our conventional herd, so we're still doing some things with that on lots of sensors as well. But maybe we'll talk about our new sensor system another day and, and how that's going with our cows.

00;01;03;13 - 00;01;26;27
Brad
Once we get maybe a month's worth of data or something we can talk about that. But one thing that's kind of on my mind again is beef on dairy crosses. Just because we're starting to carve at our facility again. I wish I had a lot more beef and dairy crosses on the ground, or some that are calving. We have about 60 that are going to be born this year.

00;01;27;00 - 00;01;52;25
Brad
They're going out of our facility at 1300 bucks apiece, so that's pretty good. But I've noticed in the markets it's of course kind of crazy. Again, if you think about Minnesota, where where I'm located, I look at Albany, which is the central part of Minnesota, where there's a lot of dairy crossbred calves. There are at least the top ones in the market, 1500 to $1600.

00;01;52;28 - 00;02;22;19
Brad
Holstein calves are the top ones, 1100 to 1500. You know, they go down to about 875 on the crossbred ones and or excuse me, eight. They go down to about 875 on the Holstein calves and about 900 on the crossbred calves. So it's kind of interesting if I look at some broader last week, which is in the southern part of Minnesota, Holstein calves 1100 to 1500.

00;02;22;21 - 00;02;49;00
Brad
Wow. Who who would have thought that you could get Holstein bull calves and they would be 1100 to $1500. When I started here in Morris 15 years ago, they were maybe 40 bucks. So and you know, 1100 to 1500 is is wonderful. The beef crossed calves 1400 to 20, 100. So that number just keeps going up. It keeps going up.

00;02;49;03 - 00;03;22;19
Brad
Some of the top calves on the market $2,100 for a black heifer, 75 pounds. Another one black heifer, 70 pounds, 2100 bucks. I would love to just breed the whole herd the beef and sort of ride the wave a little bit. I know this is, really helping a lot of dairy farms right now with lower milk prices and beef on dairy cross calves, but I kind of wanted to talk about some of the new beef on dairy crossbred calf research that I saw come out recently.

00;03;22;22 - 00;03;54;12
Brad
They talked about health and performance of these Holstein versus dairy crossbred calves, you know, in a study. So this the first study that we'll talk about compared 640 male calves, about 446 Holstein calves, compared to 194 calves. This was a Canadian study that was out of Ontario. And so they were looking at health and performance of these cross calves and they didn't distinguish whether they were Angus calves or anything.

00;03;54;12 - 00;04;30;06
Brad
They really looked at whether they were black. So mostly black highlighted calves, which they assumed that most of them were Holstein Angus, but that they could have been something else. But for the most part they were probably Angus, because that's what most Canadian dairy farmers were using. But if you look at the price that they were, these farms were receiving about 1,200 USD for these beef on on dairy, cross calves, and about a little less than $1,000 for the Holstein calves.

00;04;30;08 - 00;04;56;22
Brad
So about the same price that we receive, maybe it was a little bit lower than what we're receiving right now, but they were getting a huge market premium, almost $1,000, 1,000 CAD compared to just the average Holstein calves. So a lot of money in those beef dairy crosses anyway. So this study wanted to look at health and performance of these Holstein and crossbred calves.

00;04;56;22 - 00;05;23;27
Brad
So they looked at body weights upon entry. So the Holstein bull calves were about 106 pounds. And about the same 100 and 605 and a half for the crossbred calves. When they arrived at this facility, they arrived at a rearing facility in Ontario and looked at these calves through 84 days. So how how were these calves fed? Well pre weaning.

00;05;23;27 - 00;05;50;27
Brad
They were fed twice daily milk replacer and ad libitum starter intake through day 42. And then they were sort of gradually stepped down. So they reduced the amount of milk replacer to stimulate solid feed transition. And they weaned them about 63 days, which is about nine weeks. And then post weaning they got 100% solid feed up until day 84.

00;05;50;29 - 00;06;23;23
Brad
So what what did they really find in in this research study? Well, they found that the Holstein calves had about 23% higher incidence of diarrhea, more diarrhea, more days with severe diarrhea. So basically the Holsteins had an average of three days of diarrhea compared to about two and a half or less. So about a half day longer of diarrhea for for the Holstein calves compared to the crossbred calves.

00;06;23;23 - 00;06;59;12
Brad
So more incidence of diarrhea, they were given these calves a lot more electrolytes. Look at the severe diarrhea cases. They're Holstein calves about had about 32% higher severe diarrhea. So they had a hazard. So it required more antibiotic therapy to resolve these cases of diarrhea for for these calves. So more diarrhea more incidence of scours longer scouring days in the Holstein calves compared to the crossbred calves.

00;06;59;12 - 00;07;30;05
Brad
Well, what about respiratory problems. The cross breads got sick at the same rate that the Holstein calves did, was no difference in respiratory problems, at about 40% respiratory issues in these calves. So I don't know anything about how these calves were were vaccinated. But the cross breads recovered faster from a respiratory event. They required less interventions. So less antibiotic.

00;07;30;05 - 00;08;05;04
Brad
12% of the calves of the Holstein calves needed a third treatment for respiratory disease, and only 5% of the crossbred calves did so much higher incidence of respiratory problems, and the Holsteins had a 62% more that needed a second treatment and a 150% higher rate of calves that needed a third treatment for respiratory. I think that begs the question of certainly knowing what the vaccinations are of these calves and knowing how they're treated at birth, you know, I don't know.

00;08;05;04 - 00;08;28;15
Brad
The study didn't really say anything about that. We vaccinate all of our calves for respiratory diseases before they leave our facility. The farmer that gets our calves knows exactly what they're getting, that they've been vaccinated. They're healthy when they leave. I don't you know, we don't really know anything about these. So I think that's the the big thing is knowing if you're buying these calves, certainly know that they're vaccinated.

00;08;28;15 - 00;08;51;27
Brad
I hope that you can know that they're vaccinated at birth because they're going to be healthier. You know, I look at that and go 40% respiratory problems hold in that. That's way too many, way too many respiratory problems with with these calves. So clearly something isn't going right. I think that respiratory is is way too high. And maybe these calves weren't vaccinated for those issues.

00;08;51;27 - 00;09;31;05
Brad
I don't know if you look at survival kind of survival, basically the the Holsteins had higher mortality rate all the way through the 84 days of the study, although it wasn't what we call statistically significant because there weren't as many calves. But the mortality rate of the Holstein calves was 5.2%, and the cross spreads was 3.1%. So a little bit numerically less mortality or death rate in those calves, but certainly less death rate in the crossbred calves.

00;09;31;05 - 00;09;59;09
Brad
So they compared these calves for growth throughout. Growth wasn't much different for about the first three weeks, but after that the cross breads took off and they had higher growth rate compared to the Holstein calves all the way through 84 days of study. So by the end of the 84 days, the cross breads weighed on average about 15 more pounds than the Holsteins.

00;09;59;12 - 00;10;41;16
Brad
And this was really driven by the average daily gain starting at week four. So if we talk about the weaning gap and kind of the solid feed transition. So from about day 42 is when they started stepping down on milk until 63 days and increasing the solid intake. To survive a weaning transition, calves must consume enough solid feed to stimulate rumen development, spreads naturally, consumed more starter feed up and, you know, maybe a half pound more per calf per day when the milk dropped, which helped increase their average daily gain, these calves were more efficient.

00;10;41;18 - 00;11;19;04
Brad
The crossbred calves required fewer M cows, so fewer energy, less energy per pound of body weight gain. So really, in the end, if you look at it from an economic standpoint, the crossbred calves were more economically efficient. So it was cheaper to get that growth in the crossbred calves than it was the Holstein calves. So the crossbred calves were able to fight off early environmental and pathogenic stressors much faster, which helped them gain more.

00;11;19;07 - 00;11;56;29
Brad
They were much more primed to eat and grow, which left the Holsteins kind of struggling at the end. The kind of the conclusions from this study in Canada were the Holstein calves had higher severe diarrhea, about 32% higher risk. 12% of the calves required a third antibiotic treatment, compared to only 5% of the crossbred calves. The Holstein calves required higher energy, more M cows to get that growth, and at the end of the 84 day period, the crossbred calves about 15 pounds more.

00;11;57;02 - 00;12;27;08
Brad
So those dairy, beef and crossbred calves outperformed the Holstein calves in this rearing facility, which I'm not surprised. You know, I'm I've spent my whole career studying crossbreeding, and I don't talk much about the crossbred research that I've done on this podcast. Maybe I should at one day kind of review all of the stuff. We're still doing some cross breeding, but it doesn't surprise me that the cross breeds grow better.

00;12;27;09 - 00;12;45;19
Brad
They have less health problems, all of our calves, we just have less problems because they're crossbred. Sometimes I find, you know, to get on my soapbox, I, I find it hard that everybody's all about, oh, we got to have purebreds. We got to have purebreds. And then we start crossbreeding people like, no, we can't have crossbred. That's bad.

00;12;45;21 - 00;13;07;23
Brad
But then when we do beef on Dairy Crossing, well that's okay. And then we see the same results. The calves do better, they grow better. They're much more efficient. We see this in all of the stuff that we do in Dairy Crossing with heifers, with lactating cows. They're just more efficient. They grow better and they're less prone to health problems.

00;13;07;26 - 00;13;39;05
Brad
You know, there was another study that they looked at Angus, Holstein and Holstein calves in in Brazil, did a retrospective study of about 400 calves. Basically what they found was the Angus buy. Holstein calves had greater birth weight than the Holstein calves. And the males were the heaviest. We know this. There was no difference in serum total protein when they were born, so no indication that the health would be any worse than the Holstein calves or the Angus calves.

00;13;39;07 - 00;14;07;20
Brad
The Angus buy Holstein calves had a higher average daily grain. The Holstein Cavs had a higher odds of diarrhea, so about 3% higher odds of diarrhea. Respiratory diseases were similar across the groups. So in the end this study in Brazil kind of to cooperate. What happened in Canada. They found the Angus Holstein crossbred calves had superior growth and lower diarrhea risk under the same management conditions.

00;14;07;22 - 00;14;32;11
Brad
We did some dairy, beef and crossing stuff way back in 2019. So I did some of the first cross breeding stuff with Limousin, published the papers showed that basically the same thing, those beef on dairy crossbred calves were efficient. They grew better than a Holstein calf and they had less cost per pound of gain compared to the Holstein calves.

00;14;32;13 - 00;14;54;01
Brad
So we found what they did in our study that we did five, six, seven years ago already. So it's interesting that at least we're finding the same things in these beef and dairy crosses. And I'm excited we're going to be doing some more in the future. We're going to be comparing our purebred Angus animals. You know, I got those, as embryos there in cows.

00;14;54;01 - 00;15;14;21
Brad
And we're going to be comparing Angus by Holstein crossbred calves. So we're going to be doing more of that beef and dairy stuff. And I'm excited to do that. I'm excited to work in in this field more. So with that, I hope you learned something about beef and dairy crosses. Again, a lot of the research is coming out that shows that those calves do well.

00;15;14;26 - 00;15;38;19
Brad
They gain well. They're more efficient, although I'm not sure that they're economically efficient. If you're buying them at $2,000 a piece. But we'll find out in the future what happens there. So with that, if you have any comments, questions or scathing rebuttals, feel free to contact me at the Moose Room. That's tmo s r o m at Uman edu or find us on the web.

00;15;38;19 - 00;15;49;20
Brad
University of Minnesota Livestock Extension or n Rock dairy. And with that, I hope you have a great week and a great spring. Bye.