The BreedCast - innovative dairy breeding in your ears

Episode 05 (Season 02) - Beef-on-Dairy - Using Data for More Sustainable Cows

January 23, 2023 VikingGenetics Season 2 Episode 5
The BreedCast - innovative dairy breeding in your ears
Episode 05 (Season 02) - Beef-on-Dairy - Using Data for More Sustainable Cows
Show Notes Transcript

Introducing beef genes to boost low genetic parts of dairy herds is a growing trend in the cattle industry. This benefits farmers, consumers, and cows alike, as it optimizes profitability, minimizes climate impact, improves animal welfare, and more.
 

How does the Nordic Beef on Dairy Index (NBDI) use data tell us what preferable breeding values provide these benefits? And why is Danish Blue a top-performing breed in this index? 
 

In this episode, we’re joined by two experts on beef-on-dairy. They give us detailed insights into its benefits and why it is a leading solution toward more sustainable future-friendly farming.

 Guests: 
Reni Hvam Nielsen, Product Manager for VikingBeef at VikingGenetics
Anders Fogh, Manager for Genetic Evaluation at SEGES


Host:
Hielke Wiersma

Crossbred beef on dairy calves grow faster and have a higher slaughter percentage than purebred dairy calves. Specialized production with no unwanted bull calves is a win for climate, but also for animal welfare. There is a global trend to utilize beef on parts of the dairy herd to minimize climate impact and to optimize profit. One of the increasingly popular beef on dairy breeds is Danish Blue. But what makes Danish Blue so popular for beef on dairy? And what is the Nordic Beef on Dairy Index? In this episode, we have two experts in the field of Danish Blue and data driven beef on dairy indexes to share their knowledge with us. Reni Hvam Nielsen, product manager for VikingBeef at VikingGenetics and Anders Fogh, Manager for Genetic Evaluation at Seges in Denmark. This is the BreedCast produced by VikingGenetics. I'm your host, Hielke Wiersma. Hello and welcome, Anders and Reni, I'm happy to have you here. I'm happy to be here. Good. Your introduction was quite short. What else should we know about you? Well, I have a background as an agronomist. I used to study in Australia, and I've also worked with cows when I was younger. So I used to milk a lot of cows. And I've been two years at VikingGenetics and previously I've worked with more management and nutrition than breeding, actually. So I've worked with the whole cattle business. Good stuff. So you know what it's about, basically. Yes. Good stuff. Anders, what about you? Yeah, well, I graduated a lot of years ago. Longer than Reni, I think. So I've worked in genetics for nearly 25 years. And the theoretical part, I worked a lot with breeding. And privately, I have a small beef herd or had until recently. A couple of Simmental cows if that’s a herd. All right. Yeah. Good bit of practice. So you're the practical part of it as well. You have it perfect. Reni, then you being the product manager for VikingBeef. And with that Danish Blue as well. It's a relatively small breed, the Danish Blue, but there's quite a big demand abroad anyway. And in Denmark especially as well. How can that be? Well, if we start with what defines the Danish Blue breed, because as you say, it's a very small breed. It's a line coming from Holland that the Danish breeders have introduced and they're working on easy calving as their primary focus. And that's why it's grown to be such a success on dairy cattle, because easy calving is the number one priority for a dairy farmer. Next to that the breed has other good qualities. It has a short gestation length and that's very important in certain areas of the world where they use especially seasonal calving. We also see a very good young stock survival on the Danish Blue calves, and that's very important both for environmental issues but also for animal welfare aspects. So all in all, a very good breed for beef on dairy. Reni, the Danish Blue or the Blue in general has its challenges. How do you look at that from a VikingGenetics perspective? This is very important for us to focus on that because we believe that they should be able to have their calves naturally. The breeders are really working very hard on that for the Danish Blue breed. And we have decided together with the breeders in Denmark that we will work hard on not having any bulls at all born via C-section and we are not buying a bull if the mother has previously had C-sections with her earlier born calves. So that is really a key focus area for us and that is also a way to ensure that easy calving. Keep working on that, keep the selecting bulls for pure breeding as well that gives those easy born calves. And then you sort of turn the breed away from those C-section and onto the natural birth with which is I think, animal welfare. We have to have that. How do you know all this? How do you make sure that you have all this data? Well, in Denmark and the other Nordic countries, Sweden and Finland, we collect a lot of data. And those data goes into the bulls indices. So we can see the indices where the bull has its good sides and and bad sides, if any. And of course, then just breed on the good ones. So we have a lot of data to back this up. We also have data from the slaughter calf producers, the beef producers. So, for the whole value chain. And that's where you have your line of work basically, on the data side. Anders, tell us a bit about what Seges says and what you do there. Well, Seges is a privately owned research and development organization, so we work in all aspects of agriculture from plant production to biogas, so whatever. And also, of course, cattle. So one of the things we do is to estimate breeding values for dairy and beef. And we do that on behalf of our Nordic Cattle Genetics Evaluation, which is a Nordic organization. So, basically breeding values are calculated based on data from Denmark, Sweden and Finland and are used together. And that's quite unique, isn't it? Yeah, Well, I think the unique part about the Nordic cooperation is as Reni said the good basic registrations that we have. I think that cooperating across borders is not new. But I think that the good phenotypes are really the king. So, I think that's where we have our great moments in Nordic cattle breeding. So, you collect all this data and include it in an index that's called the Nordic Beef on Dairy Index or the NBDI, in daily terms basically. Tell us about what that is. Yeah, well basically NBDI is about money. It's about optimizing revenue from your slaughtered calves based on breeding. It's a total merit index where we have production traits. So, it's growth and it's the carcass conformation, but also focusing, as Reni said, on easy calvings and good survival in the next period. And it's done very easily in a total merit index in the way that if you choose the best bulls, you get the calves that give you the most profit in the end. How unique is that, Reni? Well, it's unique because of the magnitude of the data we have, I think. Because when I visit other countries who also have a beef on dairy program, their amount of data per index or per bull is not anywhere near the amount of data that we have. How much does that data tell us about that? How much data is on one bull, for example? Well, it can have like 10,000 calves is not a unnormal. The top one is currently around 49,000 offspring, which makes his indices. So it's a lot of offspring. A lot of other companies, they stop at a certain amount of offspring and then they don't register anymore because the data is hard to get. But in our system, it's mandatory. Both the dairy farmers and the beef farmers are used to this, so they register and the quality of the data is actually quite good. And Danish Blue performs very well in that NBDI or Nordic Beef on Dairy Index. Tell us a bit about that. Well, as I said, they're an easy calving breed and they have a good gestation lenght or a short gestation lenght, so that's the wanted one. And they also have high indices for the young stock survival. And when we look in the Nordic Beef on Dairy index, because it is an index across breeds, so we have the seven big breeds in this index and we can see the top of them is the Danish Blue. They have so many good qualities to fit on dairy cows. From a data point of view on us, what's your take on the different breeds? I think that we collect a lot of data on all breeds. We don't really care if it's a Blue or an Angus or whatever. We collect the data and we rank them on the same scale. And just to back up as Reni said, that Danish Blue is doing quite well. And I think the important part is that we have a long tradition in the Nordic countries for calculating breeding values or collecting data, and I think that's really the strong part. You can be sure we have rather strict limits when we publish breeding values and that's why you can rely on the breeding values. Reni, what are the customers saying? What are they experiencing? Well, the customers really like the Danish Blue because they say, well, it is an easy calving breed and the calves are easy to manage. They drink well, they survive. They don't get as sick as other breeds. So a very popular breed because it's easy to manage. I guess that if you're taking care of a lot of calves, the ones that you don't see are the ones that you don't handle each day because they aren’t getting sick or something, they would be the ones that you favour and that is the Danish Blue. So how is this NBDI used in practice by the farmers, Reni? Well, we publish it and then four times per year the indices are calculated and then it goes on to a daily plan so he can, together with his breed advisor, choose the bulls on the daily plan. And of course, he can decide what are my limits, what are my criteria for choosing a bull for my herd so he can say, okay, I don't want any bulls with calving ease below 105 or I don't want this and that. And together they can sort of like make the plan for his particular herd. So that's when it's put into use in their daily work. And also I think that in Denmark we use also the breeding values to price the calves. When you sell from the dairy herd to the slaughter calf producer, it’s sort of a fair way of pricing the calf. So, I think that has really also had an effect on the use of the best bulls because, well, it's worthwhile to pay a bit more for the semen because the slaughter calf producers pay more. How much more is that? Tell us a bit more about that. It depends, but I think that between the best Blue bulls and an average bull, you have 200 Danish kroner or something like that, €30. Yeah. So it gives a difference and it really drives into the direction of using better bulls and I think for the whole sector it's really nice. So, the €30 is that then like compared to a beef crossbred calf to a purebred Holstein bull calf or how is that? Well, it's in relation to an average crossbred calf. And of course a crossbred calf has a higher value than a purebred Holstein calf. Reni, how are you using the NBDI in your work then? In my daily work, the NBDI index is very important because I select the new bulls for the station based on this. I look at the index for the sire and the maternal grand sire in order to choose the right bulls that are suitable for beef on dairy. I also use it when I talk to breeders and suggest matings for the high index females - what bulls to use. So, I use it a lot in my daily work. It has a very high reliability compared to when you look at the pedigree indexes. They are not as reliable yet on a beef bull than the NBDI. If he has 10,000 offspring, of course the index has a high reliability. You know, now we talk about Denmark and that there's a lot of use in that in Denmark. Anders, you obviously have your work mainly in Denmark. Which other countries are looking towards Denmark or the Nordic countries and utilizing this? Perhaps a bit difficult question. But I think that the countries that have a nice system like Ireland, for instance, they have nearly the same traits. But I think beside Ireland, France also has a good system. I think we are in front. I think we have done a lot of work in developing the different traits and again, we are blessed having a lot of good registrations. So, I think that's important. I also think that it's important that you use the crossbred calves. I think in many countries you use purebred indices and I think that is good, but it's not the same trait. And that's why I think that having a system built on all the crossbred animals, I think that's really nice. And we have a lot of crossbred animals. I think that it's nearly or in the future, perhaps 50% of the calves being born in a dairy herd that will be crossbred. So I think it has a lot of value to do genetic evaluation. And from my point of view, the bulls that we have are interesting in a lot of countries, especially the Danish Blue, currently we are selling to a number of European countries as well as Australia and New Zealand, and they prefer the Danish Blue and of course they look at the Nordic Beef on Dairy Index, even though it's not as familiar an index in their country, but they trust it and they can see when they get the cows that it is a very reliable index for them to use. Excellent. Now let's have a look at the future. Anders, you have a lot of projects going on. One of them is the future Beef Cross. Tell us about that. I think that the in relation to beef on dairy, we are looking into a bright future. I think that there will be a lot of interesting research into future and of course future Beef Cross is one of them. It's a project that started in 2019 and the aim is to develop a genomic evaluation for the three new traits and the first step was to register these traits. And it was so of course Methane Emission. That’s really important in all the world. And Feed Uptake. So, we have placed equipment in five big slaughter herds in Denmark and we have a capacity of measuring well up to 5000 calves a year. And I think when the aim is to do genomic selection, it's really important to have a nice or a big reference group. The last trait is Eating Quality and a very crucial trait in Eating Quality is intramuscular fat. It can be determined by a chemical analysis. It's rather expensive. So part of the project also is that you'll be able to do more cheaper estimation of intramuscular fat, perhaps not as reliable but it's a trait between cost and reliability. So, we have developed a camera system where we are able to determine the intramuscular fat in the carcass. So, I think those are three really important traits.

And then to have a nice reference:

We are doing genomic tests of 12,000 of these crossbred animals of three different breeds. So, it's Danish Blue, it's Angus, and it's Charolais. So I think, hopefully, next year we'll be able to do genomic breeding values with a high reliability. So I think...well it's an ambitious project, I think. But they are also traits that are important for the farmer but also for the whole society. How much do you think that can be moved, so to say? How much impact will this have? Well, I think they are traits where we don't we haven't done much yet in the Nordic countries. So I think we have...well they are traits that where we think we will have a nice heritability but also where we have a lot of genetic variation. So, I think that really we have the groundwater for making a big genetic progress using these tools. What do you think will have the biggest impact? A difficult question, I think that it will depend on the market. In the Nordic countries, for instance, I think that methane will be very important. I think that will be a game changer because they have a license to produce. You need to do something about methane. But of course, for the individual farmer, I think that feed efficiency because a lot of the cost you have as a slaughter calf produser is feed. So, I think it would be very important. If we look into a world where we will eat less meat, I think that we will have to eat meat with a higher quality. So, I think that quality traits will also be important, but I think it might depend on the market. So, using genomic selection, how will that affect the whole beef and dairy industry? It affects a lot because it means that Reni can select her bull calves on a better basis. Now she will use the pedigree indices, but I think the egg transplant calves, they will have the same indices. But using genomic selection, you'll be able to detect which one is really the best one. We know that Mendelian sampling has a lot of power. So, I think that it can really enhance the genetic progress. And we know that for dairy that it's a game changer. Reni, what's your take on that? Oh, I look forward to it because having bulls selected with a much higher reliability, of course would mean a lot to us. Not only for the bull station and VikingGenetics, but also for the breeders that they can pick the right one. Tell us how you do your selection today. Yeah, well, we screen the population for high index animals based on their pedigree index. And from that screening, I look at the animals and see which ones have a good NBDI sire and maternal grand sire with very good indices and with those reliabilities that we cannot get from the pedigree index. And then if it is a breed where we have genomic selection available, for instance, Charolais, we test them in France. For other breeds, it's not available and therefore we really hope that it will be in the future. But based on that, and then we take some... We have tested some monogenetic traits that we don't want, for instance, blindness, ataxia, and then narrows the list down and eventually end up buying one or two bulls on that list. So, that's how we do it today. But if we had genomic selection, we could get them earlier. We could get them with a higher reliability and it will mean a lot to us and of course a lot to the breeders as well, because then they can genomically test the herd, their cows, their heifers and see which ones to keep and which ones not to. So yeah, and have even less of a climate impact than what it has today because, I guess, that's what it's all about. Isn't it? The whole beef on dairy substituting a purebred beef calf with a crossbred beef calf where the mother of the calf will also produce something? Exactly. Yeah. So it has a it has a high value. I look forward to the genomic selection. So when you test these Charolais, for example, in France, is that on the purebred side then? Yes it is. And how will this work then, Anders? Well, I think it will give you progress, that's for sure. But it's not as precise as if you do it on the crossbred calves as your raw material. So, I think that it will do even more when we are able to do the genomic breeding values in Denmark or in the Nordic countries for Blue, for instance. I think that in Reni’s dream will handle Blue first because we have the biggest reference population for Blue. Anders, what else do you think we can expect from the future? Well, I think we have a lot of traits in the pipeline. I think for instance, the ability to drink and temperament will be important traits. They are important for the farmer because it takes time. If he has a a calf that won't drink or is difficult to handle. So, I think we need to do registration for those. And that will be the next step, I think. And of course, health is an issue. We are using a lot of antibiotics in slaughter calves all over the world. So, I think that we should look at at health indices. Now have an index that is that is used. And I think we have to do better on those registrations, that's for sure. Then we are looking at dressing percentage. So that's really sort of an efficient trait because if more kg of of weight can be used to sell to the consumer, then I think we have a more efficient animal. And of course it tastes a bit like feed efficiency but we need more data, and dressing percentage can help us in that way. So, many things. And of course we need to build a genomic genomic evaluation on top of these of these new traits. And another thing could be, for instance, nucleus herds. So, I think that a lot of things will happen in the future. Cut sizes, Anders? How? Yeah, well, we have the Belgian Blue, it’s sort of the example where you you have animals that have a lot of meat in the expensive places. I think we can do it differently because we also need a calf where the mother can have can give birth. But I think that we need to push all the buttons and of course it will be a part of having this calf that the producer wants. Reni, what's your take on the future for beef on dairy? Well, the future for beef on dairy looks bright because it's coming into the world like it's being more and more popular. Not only in Nordic countries but also in the European level and actually all over the world. The farmers are looking to have more profit. And for the dairy farmer, it means a lot that he can use those lower valuable cows to put a beef bull on and then have a more profitable calf at the end. Yes. So what we actually see in Denmark and in the Nordic countries, basically, is a huge growth in the use of sexed semen, both on female sexed for the best purebred or dairy cows and then using male sexed semen on the lower genetic pool. And maybe that's something we will see for the future. Yes, we can definitely see that the demand for what we call Y-Vik is increasing the male sexed semen. So definitely yeah. And it also makes a more specialized and more targeted product that you can have a bull calf that grows even faster than the heifer calf. So again, better for the environment to have a specialized production. Final question. So if a farmer wants to have success with the Danish Blue, what should he focus on? Well, I would say use proven bulls, use the NBDI then you go a great length and you can have a lot of success from doing that. What's your take on that, Anders? Well, I think that the farmer should use NBDI. It's a very comprehensive tool and it gives a good basis of choosing the sire. He should rely on an NBDI because it has a high reliability, and a lot of good registration is behind. And then he should look forward to also taking climate and resource efficiency into account in the future. Thanks for joining the BreedCast today. We've looked at the rapidly growing trend Beef on Dairy breed Danish Blue. If you'd like to learn more, please visit our beef on dairy area at VikingsGenetics.com/Beef. Thank you. Reni Hvam Nielsen and Adners Fogh for sharing these valuable insights with us. Thanks to all of you out there listening. If you have an idea for a topic in the world of cattle breeding that you'd like us to focus on, please visit BreedCast.com or message us on the VikingGenetics Facebook page. My name is Hielke Wiersma, please join me for the next episode of the BreedCast where we've invited Amy Hazel-Loeschke from the US to tell us more about the dairy crossbreeding system called ProCROSS. Amy has a Ph.D. in crossbreeding and has spent many years on research and on why crossbreeding can benefit the dairy farmer and the climate.