Beef bull selection for the dairy herd is going to be even more important for dairy farmers moving forward.
Many dairy farmers picked bulls solely on calving easy, but with a major focus now on improving beef-calf quality from the dairy herd, this will no longer be the case.
It is widely believed that calf exports will come to an end, along with the slaughtering of low value calves.
So, ensuring that there is a home market for calves produced by the dairy herd is going to very important moving forward.
The changes made to the beef sub-index within the economic breeding index (EBI), the introduction of the dairy beef index (DBI) and the commercial beef value (CBV) are all aimed at doing just this.
With this in mind, it is important that dairy farmers use this technology available to them to ensure that they have a saleable calf that a beef farmer will buy.
Beef-bull selection
As the dry period approaches on many spring-calving dairy herds, farmers often start to look at bulls for the coming breeding season.
This often focuses on the selection of dairy sires for the generation of heifers for the herd in the years to come.
However, it may also be a good time to start looking at some of the potential beef sires that could be used on your herd.
Dr. Doreen Corridan, chief executive officer (CEO) of Munster Bovine, offered dairy farmers some advice around beef-bull selection for dairy cows in 2023.
Dr. Corridan was speaking at the launch of the new carbon sub-index at Corrin Mart on Wednesday (November 16).
Dr. Corridan firstly advised farmers to identify how many replacement heifers are needed and then the cows from which they want to breed replacement heifers from.
These cows should be bred using sexed semen, to ensure that replacements are got from the correct cows.
When selecting a beef-bull for use on dairy cows, Dr. Corridan said farmers should determine what the market for their calves is.
“Are you selling them to a neighbour? Are you bringing them to the mart? And then what breeds you are going to use?” she said.
She added that dairy farmers will have four groups on which they may be using beef bulls on.
These are your maiden heifers, second calvers, cows and mature cows.
“It is then a case of selecting a sire for each of those groups that is easy calving, has a short gestation and has the highest beef sub-index within the dairy beef index (DBI),” she said.
“The mistake many farmers make is selecting one bull to use across the entire herd, like a stockbull.
“But when you are using AI [artificial insemination] you can select four different bulls that will give you easy calving across the groups but maximise the DBI value.”