Episode 06 (Season 02) - ProCROSS - Crossbreeding for Profit and Production

Inbreeding herds with insufficient genetic variety can hinder cow health and fertility. Crossbreeding is increasingly becoming a solution to this problem, as the right mix of breeds can lead to significant improvements and profits.

How does crossbreeding lead to healthier cows with better fertility and longer lifespans? What are some of the problems that come with inbreeding? 

To learn more, we invited one of the world’s most knowledgeable dairy crossbreeding experts. She tells us about the potential of crossbreeding, the limitations of inbreeding – especially among Holstein cows, and the benefits of the ProCROSS solution.

Guests: 
Amy Hazel Loeschke, Ph.D in Dairy Crossbreeding, Product Consultant at ProCROSS

Host: 
Hielke Wiersma

Transcript

0:09

Superior fertility. Longer herd life. Higher lifetime production per cow. That's what the science says about the crossbreeding concept of ProCROSS. But what is ProCROSS? And is it true that ProCROSS cows will provide farmers with 9% extra daily profit? Our guest today will be able to give us the answers. She has a Ph.D. on the topic of dairy crossbreeding, and she's one of the most knowledgeable people in the world in her field. She grew up on a dairy farm with registered Holstein cows that were often showed on the local trade fairs until the whole herd were crossed with Montbeliarde and VikingRed. In recent years, she has travelled the world, sharing her knowledge and her story about crossbreeding. Today she's with us on the BreedCast. This is the BreedCast produced by VikingGenetics. I'm your host Hielke Wiersma. Welcome to the BreedCast, Amy. Good to have you with us. Thank you. Hielke I'm so happy to be here. And greetings to you all from the United States. Thank you very much. Amy, I gave a bit of an introduction. What else can you tell us about yourself? Yeah. Thanks. My position here with ProCROSS. I've been here now for a little over two years. And my history and my background, I come from a research type of career in education prior to this. I spent about 12 years working at the University of Minnesota under Les Hansen. And there we worked on a lot of different crossbreeding projects. So really research is my background. So your background, it started a bit further back, I would say. You grew up on a farm. Tell us about that. I did, yeah. My background in dairy cattle really started with growing up on a 70-cow dairy, which later on became a 270-cow dairy owned by my family. And I was showing cows a lot and really involved in the operation there through 4H and FFA to use the agricultural organizations we have here in the U.S. And that's really where I got into analyzing pedigrees and seeing how we can improve cows. And it's the genetics side that really sparked my interest there in terms of improving the herd. And that's really how I decided that genetics was the right career fit for me in the dairy industry. And then, you know, from showing registered Holstein cows to going with crossbreeding and becoming an expert in that field, I think that's a pretty long journey, basically. So tell us how that happened. Yeah, I really didn't get the first true exposure to crossbreeding until I arrived on campus at the University of Minnesota. And by the time I got there, Les Hansen, my advisor, and then Brad Heinz, another co-advisor and collaborator at the time, they were already working on crossbreeding research. So in our campus dairy herd, we were milking the early crosses that included Jersey x Holstein crosses as well as Montbeliarde and Holstein crosses there in the campus dairy. And I was a student worker at the dairy farm, and so I had firsthand experience milking these cows and handling them. And I got to working with some more on the record side too. And I thought, you know, this program is really neat. It really fits what this particular dairy needs in terms of improving genetics and making cows live longer. And yeah, I could see the excitement building around this crossbreeding idea through their research. And I said, yeah, I think that this is maybe the research path I want to pursue. And you basically ended up writing a Ph.D. about it, and we'll get back to that because I'd like to just... What are your thoughts about the Holsteins today? What's your take on the Holstein? Well, the Holstein is is a fantastic cow. It's the breed I grew up with. So of course I'm really attached to her. She has a lot of strengths. She's the most well-known cow in the global population. And the thing about Holstein that's really unique is that we've managed to make a lot of breed improvement with her. She's responded really well to genetics selection specifically for production, but also the type characteristics that the Holstein has is really outstanding. And so those things really have made her the global star on the stage. And then likewise now that we've moved to crossbreeding, it has really made the Holstein breed an integral part of pretty much every crossbreeding rotation out there that's popular right now. So a lot of advantages basically for the Holstein. What are the Holstein limitations in your mind? Yeah, well a couple things. Maybe a Holstein probably hit their biggest profit point sometime between the nineties and early 2000s. But then at that time we also realized that her fertility had declined a lot, mostly and correlated response with the improved production. And to this point in time in history now in 2022, that fertility level we have managed to plateau. However, we're not really doing a whole lot of meaningful selection and improvement on fertility. We have, on the other hand, done a ton of improvement on fertility on the management side. So here in the U.S., dairy herds use a lot of hormones to improve fertility. We are also using monitoring systems and motion detection systems, which have been really key to improving a lot of fertility traits on dairies. But that hasn't affected the genetics side, of course. And then the other big stumbling blocks with Holstein is that they're very large cow and so and they keep getting larger with time. So that's a problem, especially for confinement management systems where your stall size or cubicle size is fixed. And then lastly, we deal with this in Holstein, but in all the pure breeds and it's the topic of inbreeding, so as inbreeding in the pure breeds continues to rise. We see more and more deterioration of traits related to stillbirth and health and fertility. Yeah, So basically you make a pretty bold statement that there's not too much progress on the genetics side in fertility. Right. And that's been documented very well at the Council of Dairy Cattle breeding here on the U.S. side. Now, in some other populations, we have seen minor improvements in fertility. But I come to the table here today with the U.S. lens where we are analyzing probably something like over 8 million. Well, there's 9.4 million dairy cows in the U.S. somewhere. Maybe around one third of them are on milk recording and are tracked in this database here in the U.S. And that's what they've documented, is that we've managed to prevent the further decline in the fertility traits, but not a lot of meaningful improvement yet at this time. I promised that we would get back to your study and to what you've worked with and your colleagues and the results and that work with your Ph.D. and the science that you've done in the field of crossbreeding. So I'd like to start, however, with taking a closer look at ProCROSS Tell us what ProCROSS is. Yeah, so ProCROSS is a specific crossbreeding strategy that uses three dairy breeds. The Montbeliarde breed from France that's known for its specialty cheese production, they’re a breed with a lot of body condition, a very high fertility level and very good carcass traits as a result of that body condition, too, and their feet and legs, of course. And then we have the VikingRed. They're a smaller body size breed, which really, when we bring it into this rotation, decreases the body size of cows. They also bring a lot of fertility and longevity to the mix. And then the Holstein that we've already talked on and she's the production breed, the high type breed that adds into the mix. So the ideal with ProCROSS then is that we rotate these three breeds generation by generation and the reason we do that is because rotating three breeds creates a very high level of heterosis over the course of the crossbreeding rotation. And we expect the rotation to maintain 86% heterosis to be exact. Which then is the opposite of inbreeding. Yes. Yeah. So the heterosis and the inbreeding depression are equal, but opposite effects. So whenever we see the high levels of inbreeding crop up, when we cross that same genetic line and do this type of rotation, we see the equal and opposite boom with crossbreeding. And that's why crossbreds are known for their extremely proficient fertility and survival rates. How is ProCROSS different from other crossbreeding concepts? Well, it's a couple of things. You know, in the early years of ProCROSS, we learned by doing and in that I am saying that the idea behind this rotation of breeds really developed out in California with Creative Genetics and there they tested over 20 different breed types and sampled different breeds and many of them were discounted in the early years in their system. We've really found out over time that these three breeds, the Montbeliarde, the VikingRed and the Holstein really combine well in high input systems because we don't experience a loss of milk solids. That's really important. But also they're fitting a lot of other systems, we're realizing. In Morris, Minnesota, for example, we have a research station there that focuses on grazing of cattle and organic production. And in that system, the Montbeliarde actually is the top performing breed in that system too. So, we're really experiencing widespread adaptability of ProCROSS across many different herd types. So, it was basically then in California that the three breeds that they wanted to continue with when they initially started to, you know, look at different breeds to crossbreed with. Yeah they sampled all of the U.S. breeds the common breeds we think about here like Guernsey, like milking Shorthorn, all those minor breeds that now have really decreased in population size and kind of become hobby breeds, if you will. They also sampled all of the major international breeds. That includes Jersey, Brown Swiss, Normande. All those breeds were part of their early studies of crossbreeding. But as time went on, the producers in that effort sat down at the table together every week. They evaluated their results and at the end of the period of years, they said, no, these are the three breeds that we really think can maximize our profit and do the best for what we're working with. And I guess that that was then one of the first studies that were made, actually, scientific studies by the University of Minnesota on crossbreeding. That's correct. Yeah. That effort was led by Brad Heinz and Les Hansen with those California herds. They finished that up in 2012. The interesting thing about that research study was that it was all observational. So there those farmers were the ones making the decisions and just conducting this breeding plan in their herds. The difference between that study and then the ones that follow it is that we really wanted to seek out a designed research experiment after that. And that's where the Minnesota study comes into play. Tell us about that Minnesota study that you were heavily involved in or leading that in many, many ways. 9% extra daily profit is one of the things that I... It's a big thing just by making a decision that you can add 9% of extra daily profit by making a choice, basically. Tell us about that study. Yeah, like you said, the 9% more profit per cow per day was a big deal. And the findings of that study and that was the result we found when we compared the three breed cross or the G2 generation to their pure Holstein contemporaries. The things that were really unique about that study is that we in the end had seven different herds providing us with this information. And in every one of those herds they compared these progressive generations of crossbreds against a pure Holstein baseline and that Holstein was there all the time for comparison. They were high-producing herds weren’t they? They were, yes. Yeah, the herds we enrolled in this case... We targeted some very high production herds because one misconception out there about crossbreeding is that it's best used in herds with poor management or low level management, and that's just not the case. And so we wanted to prove that out in this study that these well-managed herds with extremely high production levels, 30,000 pounds of milk or equivalent of about 13,500 kilos, these level of herds in this type of production, they worked really well for this crossbreeding experiment too on the profit side. What else did you experience? Because from Danish studies... I do work a little with crossbreeding as well on the VikingGenetics side, and with the Danish studies that we have show also that high level management...there's a benefit of crossbreeding there as well. But what other major results did you get from those trials? Yeah, well, the reason for that profit really boiled down to three key factors. And I'll take a minute here and unpack that. The first thing was the lower replacement cost of the crosses versus the Holsteins. And the reason we experienced lower replacement cost is because these cows just lived longer. We found a difference of 147 more days of her life for the three breed crosses over their Holstein herd mates. And that was really a development out of the fact that they had better fertility throughout. So they were getting pregnant more. They stayed in the herd longer. That all makes sense. The second part of that equation then was their lower health treatment cost. And this study was really unique in the fact that we were able to measure health treatment cost because these herds were trained and coached and then followed through for this ten year period by myself to record the health treatments across 16 different categories of disease. And then we later assigned the cost to those different categories for treating these ailments. At the end of that, we found that the crosses had 26% lower health treatment costs than Holsteins. And then the third major part of that is their higher calf value. So not only were the crossbred calves more valuable from a purchase standpoint as a baby calf, but there were just more of them when the cows last longer and have shorter calving intervals, you just get more calves at the end of every calendar year. And that then obviously gives major opportunities in terms of, you know, using more beef or the impact that it has on the climate. I think there's a huge potential in that cows live longer. And, you know, by making this choice, it's just very obvious. Absolutely. And, you know, the one part that we did not collect in this field study because it was in commercial herds is the feed efficiency. And that part really plays into what you just said about climate impact, because that's where we see the big potential for gains, too, with crossbreeding. If we can improve the feed efficiency of cows by somewhere between five and maybe as much as 20% in some cases, I've seen that metric. They're reported in some field observations. The official results from the University of Minnesota, by the way, was an 8% gain in feed efficiency with ProCROSS. So somewhere in that ballpark we expect to see, you know, that better feed efficiency come into play. That could be a financial benefit of well, we estimated it at about $0.32 per cow per day at the 8% level. So you can imagine some of these herds that are achieving double that we get into some big financial benefits just due to that trait alone. And that was that feed efficiency wasn't included in that 9%- that was on top of that. Correct. Yeah, because these herds couldn't measure that. But then we did have these other studies to go off of. So what we did is we projected that financial gain using a sensitivity analysis and that's where we got the $0.32 additional profit, which was calculated on top of the 9%. So really, if we add those numbers together, if we include the feed efficiency, we get to about 17% more profit at the end of the day, all things considered. Yeah, it makes it makes a big difference. You know, now you're working with these farmers as a ProCROSS specialist for ProCROSS and Creative Genetics in the US. What type of farmers are working with ProCROSS typically? Yeah, it's a couple of things. We promote the use of high ranking bulls through artificial insemination. So the type of herds we work with are ones that have to use AI. They don't necessarily have to be really strong on recordkeeping, but they have to be able to track the rotation in some way. And many of the farmers do this just simply with a colored ear tag. So we assign a different color for each of the three breeds and we do the rotation only in a single direction. So that way, when the cow is up to breed, she gets bred to the next progressive sire in the rotation. Easy, simple record keeping. It doesn't have to be complicated. It can be more complicated for farmers who really want to track pedigrees and fine tune those mating decisions. And that's where some of the herds I work with come into play, too. But really, you know, ProCROSS is really geared towards that farmer that's really profit minded and wants to really amp up their progressivity on the profit side. I guess a key thing in this that farmers that are looking towards more profit are the ones that will be able to be adaptable towards this as well. Yeah, and I mean in today's economy we're seeing the slimmest margins in history and so we have to go for this low hanging fruit and we're used to making all of these decisions, you know, based off of saving one or two pennies per cow per day in these small tweaks. Well, here we have this opportunity, this heterosis, which is just a natural gift that we have that we can implement right away. It acts right away on the first generation of breeding cows to a different breed of sire. That's some Canadian data that was proved out many years ago that just switching breed of sire causes heterosis. So why not implement that in our herds? Today we see a lot of beef on dairy and I know you've done a lot of previous podcast episodes on that. That's another example of crossbreeding really where we see heterosis being expressed from changing breed of sire- only we're targeting a different trait set than the ones I'm talking about here with crossbreeding within the female lines. So in your mind, you know, because some would say or argue that at the Holstein, if you just take care of her really, really well they will outperform the Holstein with the characteristics that the Holstein has, you know, the ability to give this huge amount of fat and protein or milk would outperform a crossbred if the barn and the environment for the Holstein cow is ideal. What is your take on that? There's no doubt we can get Holstein cows to perform and when we compare them in these high input herds, the Holstein with the ProCROSS, however, we see them at almost an equal playing field. And even in cases where maybe the crosses might dip one or 2% lower than a Holstein, especially on a milk basis. When we consider fat and protein corrected milk, the energy corrected milk, they're usually equal or better to a pure Holstein within that same management environment. The key thing about the Holstein is yes, she can perform. The question is how much cost do we want to invest on the back side to get that cow to perform? So everybody likes to talk about the fantastic records that their cows are producing and what are their statistics and metrics for the month. And that's all well and good. But when I talk to producers in the field over and over again, the key thing that they want to focus on is how much revenue can I send out my farm gate and what is it cost in inputs to bring the inputs I need into the farm gate? And what is the difference that's left over for me at the end of the day? And that's where ProCROSS really sees its niche, is that we can improve the profit margin. So when you talk to the farmers, what other concerns do they have when they start thinking about crossbreeding? Yeah, so there's a lot of other stigma that comes with crossbreeding because here in the U.S. especially, we started crossbreeding first using Jersey and Holstein. They're the two most common pure breeds of dairy cattle. And producers who started that way did experience a pretty significant drop in production, both of milk and milk solids and so that's one of the reasons why Jersey's not included in the ProCROSS and a variety of other reasons too. So, we have a high bar of education to push forward with on educating the true value of ProCROSS. When you come to that crossbreeding rotation, it's the production, it's the fact that temperament has improved in all of our pure breeds. And then as a result in crossbreds. And that wasn't maybe the case 20 years ago. And it's that the three pure breeds that we use in ProCROSS; the Montbeliarde, the VikingRed and the Holstein, all three of them are making fantastic genetic progress within breed. And that piece combined with this heterosis phenomena, is really what pushes ProCROSS forward. Yet I think that's a really important point that we... to be able to do the crossbreeding we need to push these purebreeds forward to make that progress still, you know, ongoing for the future. Yes. Yeah, we do. And that can look a lot of different ways. It could be, you know, we have these home bred indices for the VikingRed and for the Holstein. It's the Nordic Total Merit, NTM. For Montbeliarde, it's the ISU index. And those rank these bulls that were using for pure breeding. We might want to consider some other types of rankings for crossbreeding. In ProCROSS, we use the PCR or the ProCROSS Rank index and what it does is it gives a nod to certain traits that we think are going to improve the profitability of ProCROSS further. Yet by emphasizing traits that our users have found really important in their crossbreeding programs. What other things do you think we should focus on for the future in terms of crossbreeding or ProCROSS? Yeah, we need to do more on the producer education side. You know, we also need to work more on bringing more precision too, to what we're doing for some herds that really require that and that could look like things like... One thing we're working on on the research and development side is genomic selection within crossbreeding that could help farmers rank their cows and assign the correct cows to generate dairy replacements versus beef replacements. That's something our farmers are asking for too, is ways to do that. And I think with the genomic selection, another opportunity with that will be to do more correct matings and optimize the heterosis basically. You know, if we know more about the DNA then we would know more about that heterosis as well. Yeah that's really exciting to me. And you know in the U.S., our data recording is relatively poor compared to many of the European countries, especially. There's some statistics out there that up to 70% of cows on U.S. dairy farms could be misidentified on certain farms where there's many mistakes in either insemination recording and then in matching calves with dams. So 70% is a really high number. And if we could instead take those herds... genomic test those calves and then make sure that that calf is then mated to the correct breed of sire to really boost up that hybrid vigor. That could be a big game changer for these herds that want to implement this type of a crossbreeding rotation. So, VikingGenetics and ProCROSS have had a long tradition of pushing science and investing in science. What are the next things that are to come, you know, in the near future for us to learn more about ProCROSS? Yeah well you mentioned earlier this idea of an environmental type of work in environmental studies, and we're just on the tail end right now of wrapping up a study in partnership with University of Padova in Italy. And in that study we found somewhere around the neighborhood of 4 to 5% lower environmental footprint for ProCROSS cows versus Holstein cows when they were compared in the same herd environment. And they did this through a lifecycle analysis study, which is a very unique way of looking at dairy cattle for those traits. And the 4 to 5% difference that they found is a really staggering statistic when you actually put it in perspective with how much carbon dioxide impact it really has. For example, if we consider the fact that there's 23 million dairy cows across the EU countries, let's say hypothetically, we breed 80% of those as ProCROSS cows instead of Holstein cows, That 4 to 5% reduction has the equivalency of removing 2.3 million cars off the road. Yeah, so the 4 to 5% is a much bigger deal than it really sounds on a percentage basis. Yeah. Yeah. And it's by making a choice, isn't it. Yeah. It's a very simple choice and it can be implemented fast and easily and without sacrificing other aspects or advantages of what the farmers are already doing. Amy, one last question for you. So if you were to give your very best advice for farmers that are thinking about crossbreeding or crossbreeding already, what would your advice be? Evaluate what's out there for the literature and for studies that have already been done. Talk to the farmers who are doing it and make sure you're confident in doing it and then pull the trigger and do it on 100% of your cows. I often run into farmers who will say, Yeah, this sounds like an interesting program. I think I'll do it on ten cows. No, don't go that way. Because the problem you'll run into when you do it on a small number in your own in-herd trial is that you might end up with individual random cows who might not meet that average expectation. And that can throw off your thinking. And then the other problem with doing small numbers of in-herd experiments is that you see more variation in the herd overall than you would if you just moved to crossbreeding on a wholesale basis. So, take the profit and run with it on 100% of your cows. Thanks for joining the BreedCast today. We've heard from Amy Hazel from ProCROSS, who has shared her knowledge on how we can breed healthier cows with better reproduction, longer lifespan, and ultimately higher profit per cow. If you'd like to learn more about ProCROSS, please visit our website VikingGenetics.com. Thank you, Amy, for sharing these insights with us and thanks to everybody out there for listening. If you have an idea for a topic in 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 with more insights to you as a farmer on innovative breeding solutions.