Genetics company co-founder Ben Watson sees massive potential in technology helping farmers be more prescriptive with mating lower-genetic-merit dairy cows.
The potential is there with cow collars and wearables allowing for elite beef genetics, perfectly suited for use on dairy cows, to improve profitability for both dairy and beef farmers.
GENEZ is Watson’s start-up AB company selling reasonably priced semen from six breeds and 12 of New Zealand’s leading beef studs at $8 to $13 a straw.
It has supply agreements with the leading stud breeders, and semen collection and dispatch agreements with two independent AB facilities, ABS in the North Island and Xcell in the South Island.
In just its second year in business, GENEZ is providing a comprehensive dairy-beef service, generally to dairy farmers with larger herds in competition with the more traditional AB companies.
Frozen semen volume discounts take the per straw prices towards the bottom of the price range quoted above.
The estimated breeding values (EBVs) have been interpreted with a new sire rating system to simplify comparison for farmers, within and across breeds.
Where possible bulls have been selected for early maturing and finishing and the right carcase composition, including eye muscle area and intramuscular fat.
Short gestation and calving ease focus on the needs of the dairy cow.
The online catalogue has bulls from leading beef studs nationwide; four Angus studs, three Hereford, two Simmental, two Charolais, a Belgian Blue and a Wagyu (some studs have two breeds).
Watson said the quick uptake of cow wearables or collars and the identification of cow heats enables farmers to selectively and proactively draft cows with lower genetic merit to beef AI.
In many large herds this could be half the cows or more and the expense of beef semen through traditional companies mounts up.
The planned replacement matings are becoming more and more prescriptive with sexed semen and wearable heat detection.
With all the other demands on their time, farmers want their AI technician to be available and armed with the preferred semen.
“Some farmers don’t realise that AI technicians are allowed to apply straws from any source, not only the companies they work for,” he said.
“By utilising the ease and accuracy of heat detection through wearables, it opens the door to highly tuned mating programs.
“Our elite beef on dairy offering is designed to work with these tools, adding far more value back to farmers.”
Calf rearers and finishers are also very keen to target their efforts into dairy-beef cattle that are strongly marked, grow quickly and will marble well at slaughter to gain premiums where appropriate.
GENEZ is encouraging farmers to tag their dairy-beef calves born to the selected sires so that calf purchasers can buy with confidence in the saleyards and the paddock.
This is called the Dairy Beef Traceability Programme, with distinctive black and white panel tags to aid NAIT traceability.
Watson is currently running trials and is in discussions around how dairy beef could have premiums available from meat processors for prime, marbled beef to provide better returns along the supply chain to farmers, rearers and finishers who use the programme.
“Finding a purpose for the volume of non-replacement calves is a massive hill to climb and it will take some time with a really good, multi-faceted plan otherwise NZ Inc will take a big hit.”
Watson has a strong interest in industry good trials and initiatives, having followed closely the Beef +Lamb NZ Genetics and the Dairy-Beef Progeny Test with several sires and breeders in their catalogue having been involved.
He is a dairy farmer with a Jersey herd and crossbred dairy-beef cattle and a keen desire to see the interface between dairy and beef cattle working well and being highly productive for everyone involved.
“New Zealand has a lot of very elite beef genetics which have never had exposure to the dairy industry, and in many cases they have EBVs and traits better than available through traditional channels and allegiances.”
GENEZ runs a low-costs model by using the services of other specialist companies like ABS and Xcell, where most of the industry’s top beef sires have been collected and semen distributed to leading AB companies for the past 25 years.
Dispatches are going out currently to autumn-calving herds that are into winter mating.
Two GENEZ products have been introduced for the spring mating season – a Conception Plus multi-sire semen straw and a sire from Kerrah Simmentals containing the dilution gene called the Diluter Simmental.
Watson said overseas research shows multi-sire straws give a 3-5% conception rate boost, both in frozen and fresh semen.
GENEZ is offering straws containing multiple sire in both Charolais and Hereford breed options, for $13/straw delivered on farm for fresh and $11 for frozen, with volume discounts further reducing this pricing and available on other products.
He has a trial underway on a large Waikato dairy farm, comparing fresh Conception Plus Charolais multi-sire straws, to the frozen version of the same product, and standard single sire straws of frozen Charolais semen.
“All of the sires in the multi-sire offering are assured for what dairy farmers want, not just random inclusions.”
The Charolais offering is Kakahu Gerry 140506 and a son and grandson, all carrying the “Team Gerry” performance that sees Gerry still remain the all-time, across the cohort leader in weight gain and carcase weight, performing above all 190 elite beef sires testing in the Dairy Beef Progeny Test [DBPT] over the past nine years.
The other new product, Diluter Simmental, containing the dilution gene, stems from the chromosome of Kerrah Lucrative L303, ensuring that Simmental marking will be present in all calves.
“He marks calves by washing the colour out of his progeny – like a Charolais – and he is homozygous polled.
“He carries two copies of the diluter gene, meaning all calves will be variations of a washed-out straw colour and carry some white on the face,” Watson said.
“Double diluter means all dairy farm staff can positively identify the dairy-beef calves born amongst dairy replacements.”
Kerrah Lucrative is a world first homozygous diluter and polled bull to be available in an AI programme.
GENEZ is building relationships to have slaughter data from finishers of traceable calves released to the farmers and industry good organisations like BLNZ.
This will trace progeny performance and build on data to increase the accuracy of genomics for dairy beef.
“Genomics are significantly increasing the accuracy of measurements and breeding values and adding to selection pressure and shorten generation intervals.
“Our bull breeder partners are forward thinking types. They recognise that a product offering good value for dairy farmers, while ensuring better performance for the beef farmer, is good for all New Zealanders,” Watson said.
