The genotyping of the national dairy herd could have a wide range of benefits, but one that could have a real impact for dairy farmers is around milk quality.
A scheme to genotype the national dairy herd looks to be on the cards for later in the year. This would see dairy cows, heifers, and calves tested in year one, and then the calves born each year thereafter.
This kind of scheme is going require a large investment, but it will have a number of benefits to the dairy sector – many of which are quite significant.
One of the main reasons why this is needed is too allow for the commercial beef value (CBV) to actually work and ensure accuracy of the data recorded.
Which would ultimately result in all calves that are sold in a mart or in a private sale having a CBV.
But the scheme could also potentially have another significant impact on dairy farms, with milk quality being one of these areas.
Milk quality
Improving milk quality on farms is a focus of many farmers, vets and co-ops alike, but could the identification of high somatic cell count (SCC) cows be made a lot easier.
Currently, farms use milk recording data to identify cows that are causing high SCCs, but sometimes a spike is not caused by one of the high SCC cows in the milk recording reports.
But if the national herd is genotyped, it will be possible to identify cows with high SCC from bulk tank samples.
The somatic cells would carry the DNA of the cows and thus the high-SCC cows or the cows that are contributing the most to total SCC could be easily identified and removed from the herd.
The cows that have caused a spike in SCC within the bulk tank could also be identified to allow treatment to take place.
This could potentially have a significant impact on how cell counts are controlled on farms.
Although the main focus for genotyping the national herd is to get the CBV working, it could have a number of benefits to dairy farmers within their farmgates.