This episode was recorded at the 2025 Florida Ruminant Nutrition Symposium.
This episode was recorded at the 2025 Florida Ruminant Nutrition Symposium.
Dr. DeVries’ research focuses on farm-level decisions and modeling. The University of Florida dairy has implemented the use of beef semen. Dr. DeVries describes some of the factors that go into a partial budget for this system as well as details some of the factors involved in implementing beef on dairy. The UF dairy genomically tests all their cows and the panel discusses some differences in beef and dairy selection based on genomics. (5:58)
Dr. Felix asks how the beef sires are selected for the UF dairy. Calving ease and fertility are key, as well as low cost. Dr. Johnson asks if spending a little more on beef semen might pay off in the longer term regarding beef quality. The panel agrees that in the current market, dairy producers are getting $800-$1000 for a day-old calf regardless of the beef sire, so perhaps beef sire selection has not been a major focus. (15:07)
Dr. DeVries describes some of the data he evaluates when deciding how many cows to breed with sexed dairy semen. Given the current beef prices, heifer retention has not been as high in either the beef or dairy sector as previously predicted. (19:22)
The panel discusses the importance of cow longevity in the dairy sector. Dr. DeVries explains the pros and cons of keeping cows in the milking herd longer. Dr. Nelson reminds listeners of the current cull cow market and how that also plays a role in decision-making for dairy and beef producers. (24:16)
Dr. Nelson describes the heifer development program for the UF dairy. Week-old heifer calves are shipped to Kansas for development and return to UF at about 200-220 days pregnant. This approach is very common in the southeast. Many of the beef on dairy calves will also be shipped to calf ranches out of state. (30:59)
Dr. DeVries’ model concluded that switching from conventional dairy to beef-on-dairy resulted in about $150 advantage per cow per year. On top of that was another $50 per cow because of the switch to sourcing your heifers from your best cows. (34:13)
The panel discusses the idea of transferring beef embryos into dairy cows. Could there be a day when this approach creates beef calves less expensively than the cow/calf sector can? They also delve into whether there will be any long-term negative impacts of breeding dairy cows with beef semen. (38:44)
Dr. Johnson mentions another paradigm shift of the beef-on-dairy system is feeding dairy-influenced heifers in the feedlot, which has not happened before. Technologies used to promote growth in the feed yard can induce spontaneous lactation in some of these heifers. Milk is considered an adulterant in the packing plant and requires trimming if it splashes on a carcass. Dr. Nelson suggests that until there is a discount for heifer beef on dairy calves, there won’t be a shift to using sexed male semen to create predominantly beef on dairy steers. (48:33)
The panel wraps up with their take-home thoughts. (57:46)
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Scott Sorrell (00:00:10):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the pubcast that takes place with leading scientists and industry professionals to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Hi, I'm Scott Sorrell, gonna be your host here tonight, and I've got not one, but three co-hosts that's gonna be joining me. We've got Dr. Corwin Nelson from the University of Florida. Corwin, would you mind starting off, just tell us a little bit about yourself?
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:00:34):
Yeah. I'm an associate professor in animal sciences here at the University of Florida. I've been here for, what, 11 years now? It's hard to believe. Almost 12. So my role my primary area of research is Vitamin Nutrition and physiology. For the last year I've had a somewhat interesting role in taking on management of our dairy farm. So thankfully we have a new manager there now and ready to go with that and I can get away to do this kind of things again.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:01):
Yeah. Good. And this is not your first trip to the pub, so welcome back. Thank you. I should have stated that before. All right. And we've got Dr. Brad Johnson here to my right. And this is now your third trip to the Pub
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:01:17):
Thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. So,
Scott Sorrell (00:01:19):
Brad, would you mind just kind of telling us a little bit about yourself? Sure,
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:01:21):
Scott. Again, I appreciate the opportunity to be involved in this. And so I'm currently a professor at Texas Tech University. I've been in that role for 17 years. Prior to that, I was on faculty at Kansas State University and South Dakota State University. So I grew up in South Dakota and did my training at South Dakota State University for my bachelor's and did a master's in PhD at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:48):
And our final co-host Dr. Tara Felix. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:01:53):
Also my third round
Scott Sorrell (00:01:55):
Yeah. Third year round as well,
Dr. Tara Felix (00:01:57):
My name is Tara Felix. I'm an associate professor at Penn State University. And I, I did a master's degree at Florida in, in Trace Mineral Nutrition, Corwin, with Dr. Lee McDowell. Did a PhD at the Ohio State University with Steve Lurch,
Scott Sorrell (00:02:25):
Excellent. Thank you for joining us again. And our featured guest this evening is doctorate Albert Dre also here at the University of Florida. He's gonna be giving a talk later today at the Florida Ruminant Nutrition Symposia. And the title of that talk is Beef on Dairy Economic Decision Making on the Farm. Now, I want to let my audience know that this is the third and final of three podcasts that we've, we've done on this subject. And so if you've not listened to the previous two, please go back and do so because they do kind of build on each other. So with all that Dr. Dre welcome. This is your first time to the pub, so we appreciate having you here. Why don't you start off by telling us just a little bit about yourself? Yeah,
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:03:07):
Albert Dre, and I'm a as you said, I'm a professor here in the Department of Animal Sciences at uf. I've been here 23 years. I have an accent. I grew up on a small farm in the Netherlands and did graduate school at University of Minnesota. So we're both gopher grads there. And I dabble in management topics decision making, adding value to that. So lot of spreadsheets, modeling, and I'm interested in reproduction, genetics and beef on dairy options.
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Scott Sorrell (00:04:49):
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about growing up in the Netherlands. Did, did you end up, where exactly was it and did you end up at Wigan at any point?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:04:58):
Yes, I did end up at Ving at any point. So I grew up on a small farm. I think when I left the farm to go to college, we had milk 50 cows. We had Pharaoh to finish picks as well. We had laying hands when I was little, and wa was a 50 minute bike ride from where I grew up. So that's what I did. I did animal science there, but part of that, I did an internship at the University of Minnesota and yeah, that really was interesting. And later had the opportunity to go back and do a PhD there. And after that, Florida invited me to apply for an opening they had, and I did. And the rest is history.
Scott Sorrell (00:05:35):
Yeah, I've met ed Van Vern there at Von and Rosalyn the GoLink. Oh,
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:05:42):
Yeah, yeah, Rosalyn I know as well. Yeah. Yeah, many of the, so it's been a while since I graduated there. Right. So some people have retired, but
Scott Sorrell (00:05:50):
Now Yes, I'm sure. So let's jump right into it. Why don't you just kind of give us a a an overview of your talk you're gonna give here later today?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:05:58):
Yeah. So Corwin Al already alluded to he's been managing the, the UF Dairy Farm for, for a year. And we've gone through some, some changes and that led to an opportunity actually to implement beef on dairy at their own university. And I know we were not the first one, well, probably a later one, but that gives us me a lot of experience in how do you go through the decision making aspect of beef on dairy? So we did what we're supposed to do. We put a partial budget together. We looked at semen cost, we looked at calf values, we looked at conception rates, we looked at increases in genetics, and then we came to the conclusion that it made a lot of sense to do beef on dairy. And then you move into implementation, you know a low bit of size selection and pri primarily also which heifers and which cows are we going to put there sex semen on the remainder then we breed with, with beef semen. You have to do a lot of inventory planning. How many heifers do we wanna make? What's our replacement rate going to be or what, what is our goal there? And so we're sort of, we've implemented that. I think we're making money by doing that. But there's also a lot of additional things we can do to make this decision making process better. And I will talk about it in my talk later today.
Scott Sorrell (00:07:30):
Okay. So I know that you guys you genomic test every one of your cows right? On the dairy. And can you talk a little bit about that and the role that that has played in perhaps selecting the bulls that you put on those cows?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:07:43):
Yeah, so we do genomic tests as a matter of principle because we're a research university. We said, Hey, we just need to do that, right? So there's not a particular faculty member that pays for that. So that really means that we have high reliable PTAs, you know, on our, on our heifers and our cows. And so part of our mating program is looking at the PTAs for net merit of heifers and cows to see which ones are candidate for, for sex semen, sex dairy semen, and which ones then go with beef semen. So yes, the the PTAs net merit play a key factor in that.
Scott Sorrell (00:08:26):
And then how, how consistent is the gen genomics across your herd? We had talked previously today in a couple of conversations about the variation within the dairy herd. And, and I was kind of curious if you've been able to eliminate that or at least understand it here at Florida.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:08:45):
So, you know, we basically, we get PTAs for netm merit. We, we Netm Merit has a key selection index. It's, you know, provides an economic estimate of, of course, of the value of, of the dam. And therefore, you know, you have SIS as well. And so you can, with pretty high accuracy, you know, predict what what the value of the heifers are, the dairy heifers that you're making. So it, I I say one of the, the interesting thing that, that you run into when you do this practically is that sometimes the net merits that you see in our case, in our dairy comp is not necessarily what's being published online. And so you go like, why these differences? For example, sometimes there are files that don't get updated, right? You have to really be on top of your game because sometimes you're just breeding the wrong heifers and cows to sex semen because there was a mistake in the data there. So of course, we try to keep an eye on that and, and, and fix that. And I, of course, because we're doing the genomic testing, I think we have a, a more accurate ranking of our top genetics in the herd. And therefore it makes sense that we're doing a little better job really mating our top genetics in the herd to dairy, dairy bulls. Yeah,
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:10:08):
I think to your, I was gonna say to your point there about the variation, and I haven't looked at our most recent results from the last animals that we had tested. 'cause We, we test our heifer calves every few months that are born, if I recall right. Our range is probably somewhere around 300 to 400 in net bear. So top animals over a thousand to now our bottom animals are somewhere in that 700 range. I haven't looked at the, the most recent ones, but we're somewhere in there for what we have for our distribution, right?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:10:37):
And so the distribution does not change a whole lot, right. With the genomic testing. Now it's just the ranking. And of course, what we're really after is that now the PTA is a predicted number of her genetic merit, and we are really after her true genetic merit, right? And because of the higher reliability, you have a better correlation. You have a, you know, a better ranking in that regard. Yeah.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:11:00):
So now I have two questions. So, so as, as the, the beef person, the token beef person, right? With Dr. Johnson on the panel, I'm really curious about this 1000 to 700. What that number really means is that her, you talk about net merit, we don't ever talk about net merit, guessing
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:11:18):
That's all milk, milk production driven, right? Milk yield components.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:11:23):
Yeah. That's interesting that you ask that right? From the beef side, because it's so fundamental to the value of dairy genetics, right? That we,
Dr. Tara Felix (00:11:30):
I imagine we have some beef listeners though, that maybe are in the same boat aisle.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:11:33):
Yeah. So let me, lemme try to explain it. Right. So the net merit is council there cattle breedings USDA's economic selection index. And it has, I don't know how many traits, maybe 17, 18 traits that all have on, on dairy cattles. There's milk, there's fat, there's protein, this productive life. There's fertility traits, the somatic cell count, there's how big is the cow? There's early calving traits that matter on cattle that have economic value. And then so we have genetic estimates from 'em, how much the PTAs, basically how many more pounds of milk, how many more months of longer productive life, how much lower somatic sales score, and then all these PTAs are multiplied by a marginal value. Like what is one pound of fat worth to a producer, right? What is one month longer staying the herd worth to a producer?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:12:30):
And we multiply all the PTAs of all these traits with their marginal economic values, and we get to a net merit value. So it's a do, it's a lifetime profit estimate relative to an average cow in the, in the national herd. I think the last we're talked about cows born in 2015. Yeah. So if we talk about plus thousand, they're saying this animal, if you say a bull is, or even if you talk about, let's say a bull has a plus thousand net marriage, that means his daughters, because the PTA really talks about the offspring is expected to produce a thousand dollars more profit in a lifetime, three years really life as, as, as a producing cow compared to the average cow, I believe born in 2015.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:13:20):
So with all that data, we need to really start capitalizing, using, coming up with maybe a new net merit specifically for beef production on, on these Holstein jersey cows. Is that something you think would be feasible?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:13:38):
Yeah, so we've be, we've always selected beef cattle for no dairy cattle for their ability to be dairy animals, right? So it is an interesting question. You say, Hey, this is a dairy animal. She's not going to produce the next generation of dairy cattle, but she's good at producing a beef calf. Now what rates on the dairy cow matter for the beef calf? And I think in the US we're not quite doing that, but I believe in Ireland, they're looking at that, for example. Yeah. So why not? We probably need to move into a trade or two in the dairy world that we may put some value on because, you know, half our half our dairy animals produce crossbred calves in the future, if not now. And so there's value there as well. So it's clearly something we have to work on.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:14:30):
So you said half, but really with, with genomic tests, insect semen, it's maybe closer to 70% of the dairy animals that are getting bred to beef semen right now. Would you? Or is it not that high?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:14:45):
It's probably, it's probably less set to, to their semen. So beef semen, yeah, beef semen, right? So 70% perhaps maybe 60%. It really depends a lot, I think, on the replacement rate that you, that you're looking for in your her. Yeah. So if I say 50, that is probably on beef, it's probably a conservative, it may be a little higher number. Yeah.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:15:07):
And how are you selecting that beef semen? I mean, you just talk about net man, what a tremendous amount of data that go into net merit. How are you picking the beef sis that you're putting on your dairy cows
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:15:21):
Going? Yeah, that's a great question, right?
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:15:22):
Dr. Nelson goes into the semen tank and
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:15:26):
You could probably tell where
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:15:27):
That turns out that not so well if you do that. No, I can tell
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:15:30):
You that. And that's all education. That's what we're here for.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:15:33):
That's we're here for, right? That's why we're just say we're dairy and beef. Right? We probably don't pay enough attention to picking our beef sis. And the reason is that I think the primary reason is that, that the Florida market does not pay well for, or or at all for what, what beef bull are used to produce cross bread calfs. Really? Yes. But clearly
Dr. Tara Felix (00:15:55):
I think that's true of any market though, right? Without you, when you go to an auction barn and you buy a, a sale barn calf in Pennsylvania right now, I'm gonna buy that calf at a thousand dollars, whether his daddy was a top Angus bull in the nation or whether it was some knot head crossbred animal. So I think that's true of any state.
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:16:13):
So you'd really be looking at things like cease and, and pregnancy rate of apple bull.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:16:19):
Yeah. So fertility still matters on the dairy cow.
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:16:21):
Yep. You want a high, high conception rate, bull and cavities and,
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:16:25):
And low cost in, in this case. So we
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:16:29):
Low cost semen,
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:16:30):
Low cost on beef semen. Yeah. And probably, yes. Now on the dairy semen, low cost is not a winner, right? Because we, we cut too much down on our, on our best genetics, but for
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:16:43):
Beef, but maybe we need to evolve the beef side to be just like that, where low cost is not the winner. Investing in high, you know, high beef genetics to improve beef on dairy crosses could be the best scenarios, could
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:16:57):
Definitely be the best scenario. So if there was a, if there was value streaming back to our dairy, we'd love to pay a little more for beef salmon. Of course, we got calculators to see if it makes, you know, the extra cost.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:17:09):
So a thousand dollars a day old calf isn't enough value to, to move that barometer. I mean,
Dr. Tara Felix (00:17:14):
Well, but what he's saying, Brad, is right now it doesn't matter, right? It
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:17:18):
Doesn't matter whether they're getting a thousand,
Dr. Tara Felix (00:17:19):
You paid $5 for the, the straw 25, you're
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:17:22):
Getting a thousand,
Dr. Tara Felix (00:17:22):
The straw, you're getting a thousand dollars for the calf. So the dairyman's not stupid. Pay $5 for the straw.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:17:27):
Yeah, yeah. But five for $7. That doesn't make any difference really on the, on, on large dairies. So yeah, I know there's there's these premium programs, right? That you, you pay a little more extra for semen. And then, okay, you're being promised, you know, a little bit of bonus perhaps on the value of your calfs and crossbar calfs. And we haven't really jumped on that because we felt, you know, that sort of locks us in and we weren't quite ready to be locked in at this point.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:17:57):
So core, when you're calving knees and
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:18:01):
Cav knees and, and fertility, you know, those are, as long as we're getting that and we get a live calf in the end, and we get that we're, we're not getting a thousand dollars here. I wish, I wish we could get there, but send
Dr. Tara Felix (00:18:12):
'Em up to Pennsylvania, we'll pay you a thousand dollars.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:18:14):
What would be the average scale cost in Florida, say for a beef on dairy cross calf?
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:18:20):
It's, it's, we're right at $800 somewhere in that range right now. So and it, it's continued to kinda creep up over time there. So,
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:18:29):
And your estimate, Dr. Devrees, of what, what would be the cost that the average dairyman would have on that $800 day old calf? Would they have $200 invested from a, from a seamen? A
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:18:43):
I mean, if the concept's good, it takes three breedings to get her pregnant, three times $7, $21 there on semen, plus maybe a little bit of labor, right? I mean, that is the out of pocket cost. That's quite low, of course. Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:18:59):
Pretty good net profit. So
Dr. Tara Felix (00:19:02):
In the scenarios that you've run, Brad asked about 60, 70%. I didn't realize we were up that high. What is, what's the optimum? How many, how many dairy animals should be bred to beef in our herd and, and how many do we need to keep as those high PTA high net merit heifers?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:19:22):
Yeah, that is of course it's a key question we're sort of all chasing, right? Because you have to first sort of figure out how many heifers do I need? And we got calculators for that that says, Hey, if I have, say I want to have a 35% replacement rate, you can, you can then go back, it says, well, how many, if I need to have 35 heifers, no 35% replacement rate at our dairy, we calculate it, we need about 15 heifers caving every month. Okay? But you, you're going to have losses right down the stream, so you have some non-complete, right, you have some dead on arrivals. So that means in order to get 15 efforts calving, you may need, I do this out the top of my head now, 18 to 20, 18 to 20 or so because of losses that you sort of need to, need to have born, right? Because you're going to have some losses and then you do more calculations. What's the conception rates? And so did you have, what are the losses you get when the animal's pregnant? But but the damage cold. And so you go through the math and that will tell you then how many sex semen insemination you would need on the dairy in order to get to that target of 15 heifers.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:20:36):
And how big's the dairy on campus? Just to give us an idea of
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:20:40):
404, 400 to four 50.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:20:42):
Okay, so, so 2020 heifers a month for a 450.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:20:47):
Yeah. 15. And at that point we milked a few more, few more cows. So we calculate 15. Part of that too is that you know, you can raise more heifers and a lot of producers, I think raise more heifers because they're afraid to be short. But that also means on average, you're going to have a higher replacement rate than you really think you need, right? Because most folks rather have more heifers than not enough. And of course, with today's heifer prices, props, that probably makes, makes sense. So
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:21:18):
It's a really interesting scenario that we have out there right now. And that the dairy world too, because these beef calf prices so high, you know, the, the dairy man is looking at, well, I get this much for that beef calf. How much is it really worth to have that dairy heifer to breed to have another dairy heifer? At the same time, we've seen this, our, our heifer replacement numbers are at historic lows.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:21:39):
We had that discussion driving up from Orlando. And that's gotta be, I mean, for, that's gotta be a interesting modeling exercise because the value of these calves are so high that they, they're sitting there thinking, oh, maybe I don't need as many heifers, right? And so,
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:21:58):
I mean, if, if, if somebody told us three years ago, four years ago that we could sell heifers at $4,000 a piece with bread, the whole herd to sex semen, right? I mean, obviously, but you dunno. So part of that is you have to sort of estimate what the market is, two years plus nine months. So
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:22:15):
That's a value right now, Brett heifer's worth $4,000.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:22:19):
Yeah, I've seen those prices too. Yeah.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:22:23):
So the last, so the last time I looked at our, and this is our Pennsylvania numbers, our extension group puts together the, the cost of heifer rearing, it was around $2,800. Is that still a, a, a good kind of an average cost? So at point B, are you getting a $1,200 net profit by raising that heifer up versus the, the $800 you're getting for that day old bull calf at at this point?
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:22:47):
Yeah, I'd say it's that, that number of 28 to, so anywhere from 2,500 to 3000 maybe upwards of that to, it depends on the area where you can do it. But yeah, that's a, a pretty good estimate somewhere in that ballpark for raising that heifer.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:23:02):
I, I think we raised our heifers in Kansas now, and we spent maybe $2,500 when it's all said and done,
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:23:08):
It's closer to, to 28 once you figure in trucking and doing all that, quite all the trucking. Yeah.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:23:12):
So it's your industry that drives this. And where I'm going with all that is, Dr. Johnson and I have built our careers for the last five years focused on beef, on dairy animals. Are we having beef on dairy animals to raise after this, or are y'all gonna switch and, and breed more heifers?
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:23:26):
I think it'll be a a, it'll be an interesting balance. I, you know, I don't expect you'll see major shifts taking place because those beef prices are, are so yeah, right. You gotta have a calf. So at the same time, producers are saying, dairymen are saying we have to be raising some more heifers, but they're not gonna throw everything in to, to start doing that. And, and so I think it'll be a, a balance that takes place over time of finding, where's that number for us? And, and you'll see some push and shove take place. I, that's where I expect to see.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:23:59):
Yeah. But it'll be, it'll be sex and beef going forward, right? I don't really see much of a role of conventional dairy. I mean, you're just gambling. Why would you do that? And now whether it's 60% beef or ought to be 50%, okay, we'll probably tweak that a little bit over time, depending on prices.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:24:16):
One thing that's always, I always try to learn something from your industry that maybe some positives or negatives that are kind of low hanging fruit from a research question. And I've always been intrigued by longevity of, of the milking cow. It seems to be getting shorter and short. I I don't even know what the average milk lactation is, but it's probably less than two, right? And
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:24:45):
That's about, I think you as the air use about 2.6
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:24:48):
Lactations. Oh, okay. Less
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:24:48):
Than three, but, but it has come down a little bit.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:24:51):
So one way, you know, to offset the need for more heifers is if we could just improve longevity, have some of your modeling work, Dr. Dre, have you looked at, I gotta believe cow longevity is, could be a huge, huge factor from a dairy profitability.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:25:10):
You published that paper in 2020 about longevity, and now I'm curious you
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:25:14):
Yeah, I would, the longevity is a, it's a, its a fascinating prob fascinating problem, right? Because you have, you talk about acid replacement, right? So it's, it's, I believe it's not true that cows just leave when they can't produce milk anymore. They quit to be fertile, produces coal cows because there's better cows in the herd. It is a competitive business that they're in, right? And so we clearly, we have genetically we've bred a year longer productive life in cows in the last 30 years or so. They clearly can't stay longer. So if you put these cows into the herds of the 1970s, they all stay a lot longer, I believe. Right? And so we're getting into the business of of decision making. And I think part of why we've seen somewhat of shorter productive life is because we might have made too many dairy heifers, is what one would say.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:26:09):
And they have to pull, you know, push out cows there because, you know, there's a limited amount of space. Now, there's also the counter argument that we've hang on to perhaps some cows too long. And if we had heifers, they, if we should have had more heifers and get rid of a low producing cows. So some, whether is there is this balance there of what is the right replacement rate? I don't believe that necessarily all cows have to deserve to stay longer. And I also don't believe necessarily that if, if we did everything right, that therefore productive life is going to be a year longer than what it's today even. Okay? So heifers cost maybe $2,800. What do we get for coke cows today?
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:26:53):
We're getting anywhere from maybe 18 to up to $2,000 Yeah.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:26:57):
For cows. And these are not the best cows that we sell, right? So we sold them a few months earlier or so. Maybe there's a few hundred dollars there. So you're looking at the
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:27:04):
Cap, you think the beef guys on this side of the table for that high Hamburg, right?
Dr. Tara Felix (00:27:07):
Yes. Thank you very much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're welcome,
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:27:10):
Yeah. But, and it, I mean, there's a lot to that. What adds to this whole thing is, is the the suppressed numbers and beef cows that are out there right now. And so that, that's just putting it out there. So our, you know, I asked you this question, I dunno, maybe a year ago, Albert, I was like, Albert, we need more cows here. And you said, well, the easiest, the fastest way to get that is to retain cows longer, right? So cows that we maybe normally get rid of say, well, let's keep them in the herd. So that's the quickest way you can increase your herd number. Well, then you're at the, the question of, well, what's that cow really worth if, if we can send her to market right now and get $1,800 for her, and you risk something happening to that cow? Well, so you're, you're, you're faced with that question then too. How much is that cow truly worth?
Dr. Tara Felix (00:27:58):
Well, and that's why our numbers haven't rebounded on the beef side, right? Our, our beef cow calf producers are faced with that exact same question. And I was with a group of producers Wednesday and Thursday nights in Pennsylvania, and they told me, Dr. Felix, I don't, I don't care what you're saying about beef calf prices. I took my cows the other day. I got a dollar 78 for my cows. Well, if I can sell my cow, I mean, there was a time when we couldn't imagine fat prices at a dollar 78. Now I'm selling my cows for that. Yeah. We're not gonna retain a lot on the beef side either,
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:28:27):
And in fact, the, we haven't been keeping heifers like we thought we would because the value these feeder cattle are so high. So,
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:28:34):
Yeah. And so it's, it's difficult on the dairy side, right? Because we make breeding decisions now, how much sex, how much beef? And we've gotta go through nine months of pregnancy and it takes us two years before they're becoming cow. We can't really predict at all, right? What, what prices are and how many heifers we need and so on. So maybe we just have to predict what the sort of long-term average, but we cannot just say today, you know, half the prices are very high, therefore they're going to be very high three years from now. I think that'd be a little naive. Probably a lot of uncertainty in that regard as far as production planning goes.
Scott Sorrell (00:29:11):
We had a question in, in a previous podcast about should a dairy farmer feed his calves or should he go ahead and sell them? Have you done any modeling around that?
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:29:22):
I'll tell you, for myself, I don't, if I can get $800 for that calf, I want it gone. Somebody else take that risk. I don't want that risk.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:29:28):
Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. At this point, at least in our markets here,
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:29:32):
Do you get those questions from dairymen here in Florida?
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:29:36):
I, I think dairymen are certainly thinking about that. What, what is it more profitable for me to, to take on raising that calf and to get in it so that I'm sure there those questions are being asked? Yes.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:29:48):
Yeah. This question about retaining ownership and so on, right? And yeah, we don't get a lot of questions. At least I don't, and perhaps because there's a little bit of math that they can do themselves, right? How much money do I have put in there? What's the added value to the calf? A little bit of risk that she you know, this calf dies, for example. Perhaps that math is not too complicated. And we, we live in a world of, you know very professional producers here in the southeast, and they've probably done that math themselves. Yeah.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:30:20):
I, we did a series of survey. Well, we, the industry did a series of surveys. One was done at California, one at Wisconsin, and then we did one in the northeast with Yukon. And all of our, our survey data of dairy producers would show exactly that, that it's a risk return. And, and this was even in the early days before we were getting 800 to a thousand dollars for 'em, right? It's, it's the risk, risk benefit scenario. And, and so most of our caps are, are those surveys would suggest most of our caps are leaving early from the dairy. Yeah.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:30:51):
And, and I believe that, right? Our producers are in mostly in the dairy business. If we can sell the caf for a good price, then
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:30:59):
I mean, we've seen more, more of a shift just to raising our replace, just like we've done, we raise our replacements elsewhere, right? We, we contract that out. And that's 'cause you have somebody that's at a specialist and raising calves and they're set up and they can do it so much more economically than we can. You look at, if you're buying 50 pound bag of milker replacer versus that's produced in bulk right? On site. It, it's typical dairy producer can't compete with that, that mode of operation that way.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:31:27):
So Dr. Nelson, you said that earlier. So you're shipping Dale Heifers to Kansas, or are they
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:31:34):
Week old. Yeah, week old.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:31:35):
So you're not, you're not doing any calf hut. You don't have anything in the hutches then?
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:31:42):
Correct. We once they're eligible, we, we send out a load once a week, and so we're not the only one. And
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:31:48):
You bring em back when they're ready. Springing are ready to cal
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:31:51):
Yep. At about 200 to 220 days pregnant.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:31:56):
And that's very common in the southeast. We're just, we're just basically following what everybody else does here. There's not a lot of heifers being raced in the southeast anymore.
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:32:04):
Yeah, yeah. It just, you can do it so much more economically out in the areas where the, the, the con environmental conditions are much better. They have the forages there. There's not a competition for space. And, and yeah, it's, they could do it much less expensive than a weekend.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:32:21):
So with that said, then the beef calve the mail calves historically that what you're saying? Dr. Breeze is a, the Florida dairy industry on the dairies, there'd be very little opportunity to, to house calves. They're used to shipping. So even the beef on dairy calves are probably getting shipped off as day olds as well?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:32:45):
Yeah, I think so. Within a week or so. Yeah,
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:32:47):
Pretty much a lot of these farms, there's, there's somebody there to pick those, the, the large ones they're picking up once a day.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:32:52):
And are there large calf ranches in Florida, or are they all getting shipped back to the central Plains? And
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:32:58):
As far as beef, there's not large calf ranches in, in Florida, Georgia might have a a bit more but as far as for beef, it's, they're sent either Texas, Kansas that out in the plains there. What
Scott Sorrell (00:33:11):
Percent of your dairy farmers in Florida Georgia, this area is actually practicing the beef on dairy?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:33:18):
Oh, that's a good question. I, what I know is all the, all the large producers are doing this, so I bet I'd be surprised if it's less than 80% of the cows.
Scott Sorrell (00:33:27):
Yeah. And is it, it, it's, it's a a no-brainer decision. Yeah.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:33:30):
It's a no-brainer decision. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I have not seen any math that says don't do this.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:33:36):
I was just gonna ask you talk about the math a while ago Victor Cabrera had done that, you know, the break even on a beef on dairy calf. What do you have to get for a beef on dairy calf to make it pay? And maybe that's where your question earlier came from, Brad, but I'm curious, have you done those break evens recently? You know, we're sitting here on the beef cycle, doggone dairies, all these expensive calves, right? But what, what's the break even on these calves reality? And in asking that, I'm wondering how far can we tax this market? Right? How far can we push it when, when beef prices start to come back down because it's a cycle and they will come down.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:34:13):
Yeah. So I haven't done any breakevens lately, but I, but I could. So on our dairy, when we did some budgeting for this transitioning from just conventional, conventional dairy, all dairy to beef on dairy I, I I concluded that's about $150 an advantage per cow per year. And that is, that is exor semen cost, but higher calf value. And on top of that, you get $50 per cow per year because you are now sourcing your dairy heifers from your best for your best cows.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:34:51):
So you spread that across the entire dairy that's worth $50 a head.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:34:55):
The genetics Oh wow. There for 50 bucks. A, a, a cow.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:34:58):
That's interesting. You put that in your model. I would've never thought to, I mean, that's an interesting concept because you're sourcing gen genomically superior heifers, you're able to get $50 or less for all the other calves, or Well, you could because you got a $50 net value from that heifer com that genetically genomically tested heifer coming in.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:35:21):
Yeah. And that's because her dam, her mother was a heifer or was a, was a high genetic value cow, right? Where if you do conventional semen, you gamble and you have some, you have some heifers that come out of low genetic cows and you say, well, I need the heifers, so I'm gonna raise them or I'm not looking. And there's, there's a big spread really in genetics. We talked about the genomic testing being between a $400 PTA spread. And so PTA on the calves, so the PTA is really, is what is transmitted to the next generation because it comes out of the, out of the sire world, right? Bulls were interested in their daughters. But if you genomically test calfs and you say, I have a $400 spread in PTA, you really have to look at the breeding value of those calfs, and you really have to multiply the PTAs by two to talk about what is their, the, the calf's breeding values that is their own genetics. Instead of they only transmit half to the next generation. So now we're talking about $800 spread, right? And that's, that's big differences really. If you look at, at, at like three years that the cow produces milk, an $800 difference. Wow. Yeah. We better pay attention.
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:36:36):
I was, I was gonna tie back to this genomic testing and, and you asked the question earlier of, well, are we selecting the best bulls Angus, or whether it's Angus or that's a common one. So I give that, but are we selecting the best beef sis for these crosses? And I, I think we are missing out in a big opportunity in finding this. And you think of the, the massive opportunity is that we can trace all these calves. Now have we been doing that? Not necessarily, but we have the opportunity to really trace all these calves and, and have it immaculate records on how they performed all the way through from that pre-weaning period, transition phase up to the feed dot period to the carcass quality. Brad is your specialty there. And so you could track all that all the way through and really know, here's the, here's what we could have the potential to do from selecting these optimum bci.
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:37:29):
So I know there's been some work on there, but I, I don't think we've really capitalized on that opportunity yet. But it, it, it'll become more and more common, I think where some of the dairy producers are starting to, maybe they don't retain ownership of that calf, but they do partner with somebody who will be able to track that performance of that animal all the way through. And, and you'll then eventually have, these are the animals that do much better as far as particularly liver abscesses, right? So minimizing that, so knowing the history of those calves and being able to determine what actually will decrease the, the incidence of those liver abscesses.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:38:08):
Yeah. And then we'll start paying more attention to the beef size, right? Because we, we had this question earlier. So right now we basically rely on the, on our AI companies to sell us decent bulls, beef bulls, right? With high fertility and CGS for a decent price. And we're a little bit indifferent really what bulls they are on the, on the, on the dairy side. We pay a little better attention there. We really go through the bulls that are available and we want, you know, to be, you know, at least to meet some, some minimum on some individual trades. And we're looking really for, for a high net merit, typically there. Yeah.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:38:44):
What about some other technology? I'll, I'll share some data later today, especially, I don't know how many, you probably don't have a lot of Jersey cows here in Florida. But I mean, in different parts of the country, the j the jersey influence is real. And obviously from a beef production standpoint, they probably have the lowest red meat yield potential of, of any breed, right? So have you seen any newer technology like in vitro fertilized beef embryos going into either Jersey or, or Holsteins, and how the economics of that, obviously it costs more to do that. The question always arises then Dr. Nelson, you brought up fertility, fertility, fertility on the dairy side, right? So, you know, conception rate is a big thing, but do you think there's future opportunities if we put an all beef embryo in a jersey cow, obviously then you've taken away the maternal genetics and there there's huge potential from a value of that calf, but it comes at a cost potentially. I didn't know if you had done any modeling on that or not. So,
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:39:51):
Yeah, so I've done modeling on this, like many, many things. I've done some modeling at some point. So, you know, I, I think the, the cost of the embryo transfer is, is a little bit prohibitive. Perhaps at this time. I'm, I'm not sure what's being charged, but you know, way back when I looked at maybe $150 per transfer and that just was too high. But if you can bring this, you know, I dunno, but it takes three transfers, right? Maybe to get, to get the calf there. So say it was 80 bucks and I have two $40 in there, what is then the extra value of that purebred calf that I get out of, out of this dairy cow?
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:40:32):
These large embryo companies are saying 40 to $50 per transfer, if that's real. I don't, I don't know. But then, then you're at say $150 for three of 'em, so
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:40:43):
Then becomes attractive, right? Yeah, I understand that. Not everybody can put embryos in cows, so you need to have the right technicians. But yeah, I think if we get better at putting embryos in cows a cheaper cost, then I, I think I can see that as just the next phase we're moving into. Yeah.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:41:00):
Do you think, Brad, that the calf raisers that are going to auction and buying those day old calves would pay 150 bucks more when they're at 800 to a thousand bucks already for a purebred beef calf that they still have 5% death loss? And
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:41:15):
I think, I think if, if that model's gonna work, and I've said this to other groups, we, we mentioned earlier, we, we need to start partnering, right? We need, it's about relationships to grow. Yep. We, they're, they're not gonna go to an auction market, hopefully if we've got that much genetics invested and dollars invested, hopefully we can track those and they all get the eids on day one, right? So we can, hopefully we can form relationships with calf ranches and then ultimately feedlots and ultimately the packers to, to add value. And I've always thought the jersey, you know, the jersey dairy producers would be the ones that would embrace this all beef embryo transfer the most. And I think in general, they have, the ones that have tried it have been Jersey producers probably. So,
Dr. Tara Felix (00:42:02):
I mean, they were first to embrace the cross breeding. Exactly. That just makes sense. Exactly. I worry though, our industry, and maybe this is my, my pessimism shining through this morning, but I always jokingly refer to the beef industry as a disintegrated industry, right?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:42:36):
So, but you're getting into an interesting problem here, right? So say embryo transfer of purebred beef embryos in dairy is economically feasible, right? Then can the dairy producer produce these pure bred beef calves much cheaper than the pure bred beef industry could?
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:42:54):
That's an interesting concept. And in
Dr. Tara Felix (00:42:56):
Fact, a thousand dollars for, to carry a cow. In
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:42:59):
Fact, you go out in the Central Valley of California there are some large dairy producers that are, have become purebred beef producers. One in particular is probably one of the largest genetic providers in the beef industry now, but using dairy cows as an incubator to produce pure bred si say Angus sayers. And so there's a large outfit in the panhandle of Texas that have been doing it, and there's a large group in California. So conceivably we could, we could produce a lot of purebred beef genetics using the dairy cow as a, as an incubator, so to speak.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:43:43):
So it'd be, it'd be interesting to put into your model. So last year, right, last year, the, the national average cow costs, annual cow costs. So annual input costs of cow calf operation, were over a thousand dollars. When you look at the lifespan of that beef cow, you know, we, we had a conversation earlier about longevity. It typically takes me about six years for that to recoup my investment on that beef cow, right? So, so now if I can put a, put that calf in a dairy system, is it cheaper? Probably simply because I can, I don't have an additional instream profit instream on that cow, right? Versus, versus the beef system. The question is, we only have 9 million dairy cows. We're not making more dairy cows necessarily. That can't be our entire beef cattle industry in the United States,
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:44:39):
Right? 9 million dairy cows and then 40% or so have to make a, a dairy calf, right, to sustain ourselves. So clearly the quantities is not there, right? If it has to come just out of
Dr. Tara Felix (00:44:50):
There, it'd be it. You know, we had a conversation on the earlier podcast, which again, we keep encouraging people listen to these podcasts in order, right? We had a conversation on the earlier podcast about productivity and, and how that factors into your definition of sustainability and food insecurity issues and those kinds of things, maybe. But, but on the second podcast, Dr. Johnson also talked about the fact that those really top-notch beef on dairy calves are producing similar quantities of red meat yield as those, those native beef calves. And so then the question becomes, okay, well then is it worth the IVF if, if we can with the if we get away from just breeding for cies and just breeding for, is it, is it worth the additional IVF costs and, and potential stress on the cow? I think, you know, one of the things we haven't touched on yet on this podcast is or, or the series is we constantly have to consider what this looks like from the outside too, right? We're having all these very academic discussions, but what's best for the dairy cow in this scenario? What, what is it, what does animal wellbeing look like from the outside? And how do we address that as an industry in, in a manner that we can, can stand up and be proud?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:46:05):
So, Tara, maybe you know something about that, right? So whether, whether a dairy cow produces a dairy calf or a cross bed calf or, so
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:46:14):
Is there any negative is, have you uncovered any negatives, say of breeding mass breedings of, of dairy cows to beef semen? Early on people were worried about subsequent lactation drag. They always talked about the fertility issue, but have you seen any difference in milk production, subsequent milk production? If, if a, if a dairy cow is incubating a a ha a F1 beef Holstein cross versus a hundred percent Holstein, is there, is there any, any, any hint of any negative side from a milk production or fertility on the dairy side? So
Dr. Tara Felix (00:46:56):
Our data would say no. I guess I'm, the question that our data didn't answer, and where I think maybe you guys having this model at the university might be able to eventually answer is back to that longevity question, right? We didn't see any changes in milk production, we didn't see any incidents of health events. But, but what about long-term? Does this change her from a 2.6 average to a 2.4 average? I don't know if we've been in it long enough to be able to answer that question, even where
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:47:28):
It, where it may
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:47:28):
Have it, it would be it tied back to fertility, right? So if you look at, well, how many times do I continue to service that animal? You know, how many temps at breeding does that cow get of? Well, do we give her more because the cost is less to breed this, and the value of that calf is, is that much, right? So if you're getting $800 for a calf versus before, if you're, I mean for a bit there, you weren't getting anything for a Holstein bull calf. So you're, you're being less likely to keep that cow around. So I'll, I'll defer to the economics there of, of how that actually works. But I mean that you could improve that or keep that cow longer because of the improved fertility or the value of that calf that you're actually getting from that cow.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:48:12):
Yeah, potentially. Right? So if, if, if the concept rate is were to be a little higher from beef semen compared to, to dairy sex semen, then perhaps you could sustain dairy cow a little bit longer. Yeah. I'm not sure it makes a really a big difference. Yeah. I don't think it really changes what we're doing with, with sex and beef.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:48:33):
Another interesting paradigm shift with this beef on dairy model that we've never experienced before is now we're feeding dairy influenced heifers in a feedlot situation. Okay? We've never, never always had bull calves that we castrated at a young age and fed the steers. Have you, what do you think the value of, of using sex semen to produce only male beef on dairy calves? Have you done any economic analysis on that? Because there are some problems with, and now they're start, it's been a trickle down effect in the last 18 months. There's been a major discount of, of heifers at the calf ranch, for example, going into the feedlot. So that's trickled down to the heifer calves being worth less as day olds.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:49:20):
Yeah. But we're still paying the same for 'em as fats. Yeah. I just told a group of producers last week, I was like, you know, historically I've hated heifers and everybody that knows me knows this about me. I, I go into a feedlot and I curse every heifer. I don't care for 'em. But you look at the price differential on those calves at the wet ranch right now versus the fact that they're worth the exact same dollars on the rail. Oh,
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:49:44):
Yeah. Always had that scenario in the beef industry. The heifers have always been discounted from a parent feed efficiency standpoint, but yet they will produce one of the highest quality carcasses. So, but I'm just curious if, I mean, so you're saying we, we should get over it and just keep feeding the heifers, even though we have utter development, we have other, other management issues with those beef on dairy heifers that we've been,
Dr. Tara Felix (00:50:11):
So Alber wasn't here for this conversation. Neither were our listeners. So part of our conversation was milk is an adulterant at the packing plant, right? And so if milk spills out of the utter and onto the carcass, then then we have to trim that carcass. That's a production loss, right? And so that's where our concerns around these heifers stem from
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:50:29):
In, in the panhandle, in the western, in western Nebraska. Oh wow. Southwest Kansas and panhandle of Texas has been the start of this we tend to get a lot of utter development on these feedlot heifers that are beef on dairy crosses, and then they're open, but they're producing milk and that milk is an adulterant. And so it's a major issue both at the packing and feedlot level. So
Dr. Tara Felix (00:50:56):
We, we use all the technologies that historically the dairy industry used to try to induce spontaneous lactation, right? If you go back into the eighties and the early work with progesterones and estradiol to, to induce a lactation without a calf, those are all the technologies we use in the feed yard to promote growth. And so we're, we're essentially inducing spontaneous lactation without the benefit of milking the animal. Right? But, but when I asked the packers in Pennsylvania about this, and, and I have pretty good relationships with them, I go onto their kill floor and I say, how does this impact? I go onto their harvest floor, how does this impact the, the, the production line? And they're like, oh, we got a guy for that, right? Or we got a girl for that. And they have somebody that's there designated to, to cut out, utters out anyway. And so they didn't see it as a big, big deal.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:51:49):
Yeah. I'm glad to talk through all of this because I wasn't really aware that there were these, these six differences. Really
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:51:57):
Where it probably comes into play is when you start seeing the discount for that female beef calf born in the dairy, that's when you'd say, okay, yeah, it might be worth it then to, you'll, you'll start a question right now, if there's not a discount, it doesn't matter. You're gonna use whatever's cheapest, get that cow that that dairy cow pregnant. But if you start seeing a difference there, then yeah. And which really will come from at the, the packing facility saying, well, is there, are we gonna give a lower price at that point? Or, you know, how much does it really cost the difference in cost to raise that female versus raise that male? So
Dr. Tara Felix (00:52:33):
Well, and I haven't paid as close attention to the difference in the sex semen costs, right? What's the price differential to get, or, or the fertility challenges? So we talked through fertility challenges. What's the price differential to get a bull calf from sex semen sex male semen out of the dairy cow versus a conventional semen? I know there's an upcharge on the semen, right? I know there's some conversation about fertility differences, but I'm not dialed in, in the dairy industry to know enough about what those are. No,
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:53:06):
I would say maybe we pay for, for sex dairy versus conventional dairy. It's maybe a $15 upcharge or so.
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:53:14):
Is there a difference in fertility?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:53:17):
Yeah, I think most people would say perhaps there's a little knock on fertility for sex, but not as much anymore as we perhaps used to think. So maybe one, two.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:53:28):
But is that the same on the sex male semen?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:53:29):
So I don't know on the sex male semen,
Dr. Tara Felix (00:53:31):
Because I, I understood the sex male semen to be a little bit more expensive and a little bit bigger, knock on fertility. Okay. Maybe,
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:53:40):
I don't know. I don't know the answer on that. I
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:53:41):
Don't know the answer to that either.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:53:42):
Yeah. But you guys aren't, you've not done any research in that area yet?
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:53:47):
No. We haven't looked at that because for us it has not been practical enough. Right. You
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:53:51):
Forgot to include a reproductive biologist here.
Dr. Tara Felix (00:53:54):
Come on Scott. We could have fit one more chair in here.
Scott Sorrell (00:53:57):
We can always get another table.
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:53:59):
Yeah, it's interesting. So I look at these things mostly because our, our our, our producers around the state or in Georgia say, Hey, we got an opportunity here. What does this make sense or not? And I haven't really heard that.
Scott Sorrell (00:54:14):
So what are some of the questions you get from producers today relative to this and relative to economics? Yeah,
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:54:21):
So I, I, I work with
Scott Sorrell (00:55:22):
Got more things to model
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:55:23):
After this. We do, we work, we work with a yellow sales spreadsheet. This as I say, right? So, okay, here's, here's a little model and you play as a producer l industry with some, you can change some of the inputs and see how much that changes your, your output, for example. And we did, we did talk about putting embryos in, for example for this, for this semen into cows. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (00:55:46):
I dunno if you guys noticed or not, but we've been gone almost an hour, which is, it's, it's gone, it's gone fast. I gotta tell you. It's been very interesting. And Albert, I'm, I'm sure we didn't cover everything that's gonna be presented at your presentation today, so we'll just maybe have to come back for another one
Dr. Albert DeVries (00:56:01):
Sometime. Yes, correct. But I have a few more things on the, on the slides today that we haven't really talked about.
Scott Sorrell (00:56:06):
Alright, well good. And so that's a great reminder to the audience. We are recording these presentations, so they'll be available at alchem.com/real science, so I'd encourage you go out there and, and get the full story there as well. Really want to thank you guys. This has been a great conversation. What I'd like you to do now is just kind of think of a couple things you'd like to leave our audience with, right? Things that you think they ought to know, or maybe something practical may maybe it's something you wanna look, look into in the future, Albert. But gonna ask each of you kinda maybe share a couple comments. And, and, and Tara, why don't I start down here on the end, if that's all right. Oh,
Dr. Tara Felix (00:56:45):
Geez. Thank. We, we kind of covered a lot of ground, Scott.
Scott Sorrell (00:56:48):
We did. Gives you a lot of choices.
Balchem (00:56:57):
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Dr. Tara Felix (00:57:46):
I think it's interesting what Dr. Nelson said about still being focused at the dairy solely on that Calvin use question, right? Because I think it's on the beef side, we've, we've really pushed to move past that, but we haven't trickled down that valuation to the dairy yet. And I think there's still some, to me that signals there's still some room for growth in this area, right? There's still some room for communication between our industries and some room for improvement.
Scott Sorrell (00:58:17):
Brad, your thoughts? Well,
Dr. Brad Johnson (00:58:18):
The last thing Dr. Felix said, communication. I thoroughly enjoyed this podcast because of the integration between the whole dairy enterprise and carrying these animals all the way to the rail, right? That's what I think we need more of this, we need more of this open dialogue to understand the needs. You know, like, like Dr. Nelson and Dr. Dese talked about fertility and cavities we're, we didn't, we probably didn't think that was that important anymore, right? And we want red meat yield, red meat yield now, and, but, so we got, we gotta sit down and have more of these, Scott, as far as the integration between the two industries to move both industries to the highest potential level. So,
Scott Sorrell (00:59:03):
Makes sense. Great comments. Corwin, what are your thoughts? Yeah,
Dr. Corwin Nelson (00:59:07):
That's, that's a very good point on, on the integration. And I think that that'll certainly be taking place. It is taking place in, in particularly for some of these dairy producers that have a stake in how that final animal turns out, you know, at the, the plant, right? So they're, they're gonna be paying attention to some of those questions and, and, and doing that. So it's starting but it needs to take place more. There's a lot of, a lot of things that we can get into and, and additional conversation. But the one, I'd say just a, a takeaway and kind of where do we go in the future and making a balance. And, and I think it's keeping a balanced approach, right? Not necessarily doing anything drastic. I think certainly on the, the price of that beef calf, you, we'll take it as long as we can get it, but we're not necessarily gonna base our, you know, for a dairy producer, we're not gonna base our whole financial structure on that. We'll take it as long as we can get it. At the same time, you have to keep looking at what do I need to do to my main business here of dairy animals raising that, getting the, the appropriate number of heifers. So keeping a balance approach there is, I think the, the way to move forward on that.
Scott Sorrell (01:00:16):
Albert gonna give you the last word. Well,
Dr. Albert DeVries (01:00:19):
Yeah. So, yeah, interesting discussion, right? So I, I think what we've talked about sort of when, from the perspective of the dairy industry, we see lots and lots of data that we have to work with or can, right? We collect a lot of data, whether it's no production, whether it's sensor, whether it's genetics. And we're trying to figure out how to fine tune all this to make as the most profitable dairies essentially, if you can. And so I see more integration. I look forward to getting data back from slaughter plants and so on, that we can fine tune what we're doing. We're also looking into just making even better, making decisions. We focus a lot on the genetics and a little bit on the fertility and the calvings but's, a lot of other things that we can sort put into the mix to really fine tune, which heifer and cow is going to make my next generation of, of dairy calfs. And, and therefore also beef calfs. A lot of sire selection decisions left. How many heifers do we really need? When do we decide when to replace cows? Lots and lots of decisions. We're open-ended, still. We're working on them and it's sort of a fascinating time to be in the livestock industry. Yeah,
Scott Sorrell (01:01:32):
Yeah. Well said, well said. I tell you, this has been enjoyable. I really appreciate it. Appreciate your expertise, appreciate your time today, guys. You spent a lot of time with us, but this, it's, it's been worth it. And to our loyal listeners thank you for joining us once again. We hope you learned something. I hope you had some fun. We hope to see you next time here at Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Balchem (01:01:56):
We'd love to hear your comments or ideas for topics and guests. So please reach out via email to anh.marketing at balchem.com with any suggestions, and we'll work hard to add them to the schedule. Don't forget to leave a five star rating on your way out. You can request your Real Science Exchange t-shirt in just a few easy steps, just like or subscribe to the Real Science Exchange. And send us a screenshot along with your address and t-shirt size to anh.marketing at balchem.com. Balchem’s Real science lecture series of webinars continues with ruminant focused topics on the first Tuesday of every month. Monogastric focused topics on the second Tuesday of each month, and quarterly topics for the companion animal segment. Visit balchem.com/realscience to see the latest schedule and to register for upcoming webinars.