On the recent the Dairy Edge podcast, Emma-Louise Coffey was joined by Dr. Joe Patton, a dairy specialist with Teagasc and Kevin Downing, a geneticist from the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) to explore the key traits required in dairy replacements to maximise income on Irish dairy farms.
Joe started by saying: ”The milk payment system in Ireland is based off solids, which means animals required for dairy herds need to be able to produce high levels of solids from grazed grass.”
Joe added that ”fertility is the most important trait, regardless of the production system, to ensure cows calf at the right time of the year, giving cows the opportunity to remain in herds over multiple lactations”.
”Good fertility performance has a knock-on effect on increasing production potential and reduces the number of replacements required annually which gives rise to greater profitability,” he said.
Identifying herd weaknesses
Along with this Kevin Downing urged farmers to assess the current economic breeding index (EBI) status of their dairy cow herd and identify any weaknesses that exist.
From there, farmers can set the priorities for the future milking cows and select the bull team for the upcoming breeding season accordingly.
Image source: ICBF
Both Kevin and Joe emphasised the substantial genetic gain attainable though breeding heifers with high EBI artificial insemination (AI) straws, but despite this, 30% of dairy heifers born in 2020 were from a stock bull.
Both Joe and Kevin outlined concerns over the number of dairy heifers that are born on farms to stock bulls, and identified this as a weakness in Irish dairy herds.
‘There is no point in spending time picking bulls off the active bulls list for half of the dairy genetics to come from a stock bull with low reliability,” Joe said.
Joe concluded by recommending ”that farmers should consider synchronising programmes, to AI all replacement heifers in a short timeframe”.
”This may be useful for farms that rear heifers on an out-block, so that AI of heifers can be done in a short time period and reduce the need for stock bull usage on heifers,” he concluded.