This episode was recorded at the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada. Mike gives an overview of his three presentations at the conference regarding heifer supply. The panel discusses how the industry went from too many heifers to not enough heifers. (3:46)
This episode was recorded at the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada.
Mike gives an overview of his three presentations at the conference regarding heifer supply. The panel discusses how the industry went from too many heifers to not enough heifers. (3:46)
Clay asks Dan about his breeding philosophy from a semen standpoint right now as a purebred Holstein breeder. He suggests skating to where the puck’s going versus where it’s been, and focusing on yield and protein after such a large emphasis on fat. He also emphasizes health traits, particularly because the industry needs cows to last longer due to low heifer supply. Mike notes that this can have negative impacts, including lower milk yield, more chronic mastitis, and perhaps elongating the generation interval of genetic gain. He shares that while huge strides have been made in genetic improvement for yield and components, we have gone backwards a bit on disease resistance and fertility in the last five years or so. Tom suggests that it just ups the ante on management, especially with an older milking herd. (10:55)
The panel talks about sexed semen (beef and dairy both) and IVF/embryo transfer. (14:49)
Mike details some research in Holstein herds that decreased their replacement rate and number of heifers calving from 2020-2022 (surplus herds) compared to 2023-2024 (short herds). Short herds kept cows 25 days longer in milk, but the net impact was an average of seven pounds less milk per day over the last 30 days prior to culling. He also noted an increase in chronic mastitis in the short herds. (20:18)
Mike describes his presentation regarding the heifer completion rate: once a heifer is born alive, what’s the expected percent of heifers remaining at first calving? Many producers have a false high assumption of this number, around 90%. In 65 herds Mike analyzed in the last year, the median completion rate was 76%. He details the different life stages during which losses occurred, along with management considerations to reduce these impacts. Dan shares his perspectives on the heifer completion rate. (24:11)
The panel discusses a variety of topics around heifer supply, including whether heifers are entering the herd at a younger age to compensate for low inventories, appropriate heifer size at calving, optimal age at first calving, and just how short the supply of heifers is. (29:01)
Panelists share their take-home thoughts. (38:35)
Please subscribe and share with your industry friends to invite more people to join us at the Real Science Exchange virtual pub table.
If you want one of our Real Science Exchange t-shirts, screenshot your rating, review, or subscription, and email a picture to anh.marketing@balchem.com. Include your size and mailing address, and we’ll mail you a shirt.
Scott (00:07):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the podcast where leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. So we've got a, a another star studded, uh, panel of of experts here today. Uh, our, our key guest is gonna be Dr. Mike Overton. Uh, Mike, you gave three presentations this week all related to Heifer Supply. Now, um, we're gonna have you talk about that in a bit. Before we do that, I'd like to introduce our guests. And so I've got, uh, Dr. Clay Zimmerman down here. He's gonna be serving as co-host. I got two color commentators. I got Dr. Uh, Tom Overton over here. Uh, this is his second podcast of the day. Say hello, Tom. Yeah.
Dr. Tom Overton (00:51):
Hey, Scott. Thanks for having me. Right. And glad to do this, uh, with my brother from another mother That's
Scott (00:57):
What, funny, that's what funny. I was gonna say. I've got an Overton here. An Overton here. Is this the Overton window?
Dr. Tom Overton (01:03):
Uh, you're in trouble.
Scott (01:07):
Alright.
Dan Siemers (01:07):
I don't know if it's weird, but I feel like the meat in the Overton sandwich
Scott (01:15):
Agreed. And we've got, and, and, and our jokes are here as Dan Seamers from Seamers Seamers Dairy. He's the president, CEO. So, you know, as is tradition here at the Real Science Exchange, we do talk a little bit about what's in the glass. Clay, what's in the glass down there? I
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:31):
Have an old fashioned here.
Scott (01:33):
Oh, nice. Yeah. Now, that's the first time I think you've ever had an old fashion
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:37):
On the podcast. It's, I I actually never had one in my life until yesterday,
Scott (01:41):
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:42):
I did. So, Dan, this is an honor of
Dan Siemers (01:45):
You. Thank you. That is an, that is a, uh, supper club tradition in eastern Wisconsin. Absolutely.
Scott (01:51):
Dr. Overton. And, and what's in your bottle? I've
Dr. Tom Overton (01:53):
Got a boring light beer.
Scott (01:54):
A boring light beer. Well,
Dr. Tom Overton (01:55):
At least
Scott (01:56):
It's better than what we had on the last podcast.
Dan Siemers (01:59):
Scott (02:04):
I've got a bourbon of some sort. Uh, buffalo. Trace Buffalo. Here we go.
Dan Siemers (02:09):
Thank you. What, what do I have in mind? Buffalo Trace also on ice. On ice. Yeah. It looks delicious. Smells even better.
Scott (02:15):
Dr. Overton.
Dr. Tom Overton (02:17):
Yeah, I've got a tonic actually that has gin in it this time. So this is fantastic.
Scott (02:22):
So this, this is gonna liven up. I can tell it's already pretty lively, but here we go.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
New research is changing everything we thought we knew about Choline's impact on the cow and her calf and top scientists have a lot to say about it. They're presenting new research that supports choline as a required nutrient to optimize milk production choline as a required nutrient to support a healthy transition choline as a required nutrient to improve calf health and growth and choline as a required nutrient to increase colostrum quantity. This new research is solidifying Choline's role as a required nutrient for essentially every cow, regardless of health status, milk production level, or body condition score. Learn more about the science that is changing the game and the choline source that is making it happen. ReaShure Precision Release Choline from Balchem. Visit balchem.com/scientistssay to learn more
Scott (03:38):
As we get started. Mike, why don't you just kind of give us kind of a broad overview of the three presentations you gave, uh, kind of squished together.
Dr. Mike Overton (03:46):
Sure. So one of the, the first one I did was, uh, a collaboration for Dairy C and Heifer Association. So Ellen Cushing and I did one, and we talked about heifer inventory needs, uh, explained some of those issues. And then she talked about some of the benefits and opportunities through Dairy Calf and Heifer Association. So that was the first thing we did yesterday morning. The second one, one was a pre-conference sponsored by Zoetis, where I literally talked about quantification of, uh, the impact of not having enough efforts coming through the system. So earlier this year, uh, national Mastitis Council had asked me to, uh, address the topic, can we actually measure or quantify the impact in hers that have not produced enough heifers? And the the short answer is yes, even though it's a bit early in that process, I was able to quantify that these herds that did not have enough heifers and were forced to reduce replacement rate did suffer some consequences of less milk at dry off and less milk at the time of animals leaving the herd. And, uh, I also had more chronic mastitis. So yeah. Able to do that in a fairly small data set of about 19 herds, but, uh, still significant. Yeah.
Scott (04:58):
So give us an overview. How do we get here? Right. It wasn't that long ago, we had too many heifers. Right. Everybody's breeding to sex semen. And we had more heifers than we knew what to do with. Yeah. And now all of a sudden, and it's not taking that long. We don't have
Dr. Mike Overton (05:10):
No, it hasn't, it wasn't that many years ago where I was up, uh, dairy science talking at a conference on, uh, dairy replacement heifers. And we were talking about how do we get rid of these extra heifers? How do we pick and choose who stays and who goes? But I remember distinctly standing up in the front of that audience going, we gotta be careful. We don't want to have this pendulum swing too far the other way. And now, fast forward to literally three, four years ago, uh, we started seeing some early indications based on breeding decision making that, uh, guys were very much attracted to the value of these beef cross calves. And so, uh, that value took off based on a, uh, low beef cow inventory, high demand for beef in this country. Uh, not enough cows to produce enough beef animals. And, uh, you know, thankfully for the dairy industry, uh, the beef cross calves have really filled a nice void in the beef industry is representing really high quality Yeah. Sustainable beef. We're
Dan Siemers (06:11):
Pretty, we're pretty much addicted to the, uh, black crack.
Dr. Mike Overton (06:13):
Black crack. That's right. The, yeah, that's exactly
Dan Siemers (06:16):
Right. There's, it's, it's an addiction thing. There's a lot of dollars there. And, and, and it's easy for most producers. Yeah. And day old calves, you know, I I I've seen different producers raise them out to different, uh, weights and, and, and try to do whatever, but man, it's hard to turn down that baby calf number.
Dr. Mike Overton (06:33):
It's been a massive influx, as you know, of cash flow for those animals. Absolutely. And, and that's been a, a big, uh, financial difference maker for many, many dairies.
Scott (06:43):
And it's not gonna change anytime soon. So what's gonna happen with the heifer population?
Dr. Mike Overton (06:48):
Yeah. Well, we got into this situation of not enough heifers for a couple reasons. One, we just mentioned the, the high value of beef. So that high value of beef led to some decision making about which sis they're going to use in the animals and the herd. So beef crossed calves. But the second part a lot of people don't realize is that the beef industry really needed heads to fill slots and OTs. And there were a lot of dairy heifers that went into feedlots because that high price of, uh, beef has, uh, made the, even the beef, I mean, the dairy heifers is very attractive.
Dan Siemers (07:21):
And a lot of dairy auctions, the, your number one competitor if you're trying to buy heifers, are the feedlots. Yep. They're absolutely in there battling away 'cause that they, they need them just like we do.
Dr. Mike Overton (07:31):
Yep. And that's been a difficult situation for you guys in terms of trying to acquire heifers if you haven't, don't have enough in your production line.
Scott (07:39):
Yeah. So again, it's not gonna change, right.
Dr. Mike Overton (07:42):
If we look at some of the forecast, whether we're talking about the beef futures markets or looking at forecast based on, uh, beef cow population don't see it changing anytime soon. Um, you know, a lot of these beef producers got into situation 'cause they didn't have enough grass. We had dry conditions, not enough water. And one of the mechanisms of survival is getting rid of some animals you normally would keep back as replacements. You thin the herd down, get to the lean point. And so now even when they get ready to start saving some animals back, it's still gonna be a few more years before we get back if it were to change tomorrow. And I just don't think it's changing tomorrow.
Dan Siemers (08:17):
And a lot of those same areas are still dry.
Dr. Mike Overton (08:19):
Exactly. That's what we heard today, uh, from one of the presenters as well, that he, uh, he was talking about this, uh, and he actually is a, is a partner in the beef operation, so they're just still really dry. They couldn't start back and keep animals if they really wanted to.
Scott (08:36):
You know. Sorry, Tom. I was just gonna say real quick, uh, Dan made a conver uh, a comment in the last podcast that kind, uh, a spawn an idea that's kind of an unintended intended consequence is that he was talking about how quickly, uh, you can change the genetic potential for butter fat in just one generation. And so this though, is going to stretch out that that timeframe, you, you're gonna stretch out the generation interval. And so it's gonna negatively impact your ability to upgrade your, your, your, uh, your animals for genetic potential for fat. Does that make sense? If you're not having as many heifers,
Dr. Tom Overton (09:16):
But I think, yeah. But again, it depends probably on, on how you're selecting those heifers. Right? If you're looking at your high, if you're keeping your high genetic animals right, things like that, that you're testing and things like that, maybe less of an impact. I don't know. I'm not a geneticist.
Dan Siemers (09:26):
Right. I I agree with that. I, if we're, if we're, uh, keeping and using that, that sex semen and that high caliber genetics on the right places and making the beef calves where we are, like most dairy men are really good at this, uh, figuring out where to make the calves from, it's all gonna work out. It's just a matter of getting the numbers right. Uh, that, that we, uh, that we're all raising enough, uh, of the holsteins or the dairy, uh, uh, uh, replacements and, uh, you know, the, the beef stuff, maybe in the long run, we end up with a situation where we're using, um, sexed Holstein, uh, female Holstein and, uh, and male beef just because I, I, I think that there's a little higher value there as well. I I, it might end up being that everything that we're using is sext.
Dan Siemers (10:12):
And, uh, and that would certainly be an interesting world also. 'cause we're not there yet today, uh, today in the, in the world of, uh, of, uh, black semen. It's all about what we can buy for the cheapest black calf and cheap semen price. And, um, and I'm in the genetic world a little bit. And so, um, it's, it's a challenge because for the AI companies, of course, they're, uh, they're not harvesting the same amount of dollars in because that beef semen is cheap. And, and, and because it's so easy to float from one person to the next, it seems like somewhere between six and $8 is what that trade's for. And, uh, that's, that's not, you bring in less dollars from that than you did from the Holstein. So it's, uh, the industry will figure it out. But it's been a little bit of a challenge.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (10:55):
So. So Dan, I'm curious, you know, being a, a purebred Holstein breeder, what's your breeding philosophy right now from a, you know, from a Siemers standpoint? Um,
Dan Siemers (11:06):
Uh, as far as a genetic standpoint, what we're looking at, I think I said this in the last one. I, I, I think you have to skate to where the puck's going versus where it's been, where it's been, has been fat, uh, and fat, fat, fat. That, that's where everything was based on. I think right now you need to focus on a little bit more milk 'cause that's the carrier and a little bit more protein percent. And, and, and I think obviously all the health traits are important. All dairymen know that we're, we're, we need those cows to last an extra lactation or, or, or something close to that based on all the numbers here that we're talking about. Cows just have to last longer. And certainly when you look at the culling numbers, they are lasting longer. We're, we're, uh, we're keeping the dairy herd as big as it's ever been. And our culling numbers week on week, month on month, year after year here, keep going down. It's been a fairly amazing thing how the dairy herd is aged, but yet we're still getting it done. And it's, it's, it's pretty cool actually.
Dr. Mike Overton (12:01):
Yeah, that's an interesting point. I think that's a little bit of a two edged.
Dan Siemers (12:04):
Of course it is.
Dr. Mike Overton (12:05):
Because if you look at some of the, the data that's been, uh, mentioned recently, you've had like 73 consecutive weeks of decreases in cow culling on the dairy side. And what that means, as you say, we're keeping cows longer. So if we're keeping cows longer because they truly are more competitive versus the replacement heifers, that's a great thing. But there are herds keeping cows longer because they don't have the heifers that come in and take place. Absolutely. And that's the other part of this that's really troubling for many herds. That's what I was able to document in one of the presentations I did yesterday, is quantifying that impact. Because when you don't have heifers coming in, you essentially are forced to keep your existing cows longer and you're gonna get lower milk per cal per day. You'll have the potential for more diseases that showed more chronic mastitis. So that's a, that's a really big challenge. And, and going back to your question about genetic gain, I think guys like yourself are still making really good decisions about who gets the sex semen, you know, figuring out which dams do I want to use to create the next generation. That's still happening, but I think we are seeing a little bit of elongation of that generation interval simply because we're not turning the cows quite as much because of the, not as much pressure from
Dan Siemers (13:20):
That. The other side on that, Mike, is with this aging herd, how long can the rubber band stretch until it snaps? And we no longer have this older herd because it's, uh, we have all the other health issues, cell counts. Uh, and, and at some point, uh, it, it, it contracts again. So I it's, it's, that can be interesting too. But you know, part of it is we probably as an industry just need to be better at being able to keep cows around longer,
Dr. Mike Overton (13:48):
As you pointed out. We want to keep breeding for a more balanced cow that's got the production potential, but also has good fertility. She's got good resistance to disease, um, and has the capacity to stay into her longer. We got a base change coming up this year, actually just this
Dan Siemers (14:05):
Happened yesterday. Just
Dr. Mike Overton (14:06):
Started. Yep. And, uh, one of the things we've noticed in the last five years is we continue to make huge strides in terms of genetic improvement from our production and a components perspective, especially components where we've gone backwards though, is some of the disease resistance issues and, uh, fertility issues in the last five years. So it's really interesting that we've made tremendous progress over the last, uh, 20 years from a fertility perspective in the last five years has slipped back a little bit,
Dr. Tom Overton (14:36):
But I think it just ups the anti on management, right? I mean, all those things we do with, you know, herd health management, cow management, transition nutrition, all the things that come along with that, it just helps the ante, especially if you think about an older herd, right. In some cases, so, yep. Yep.
Dr. Mike Overton (14:49):
And to his point earlier about use of sex semen, I mean, think back 10, 15 years, I was advising people at the time, you can't use sex semen in a milking herd. And we couldn't because we didn't have the fertility. Now we've got amazing fertility in the lactating dairy herd. We've got widespread use of sex semen. I think as, as you said, we're gonna see sex seemingly use more on the beef side. So we get to the point where we probably will see much more selection for just a female dairy and a male beef. Um, this herts not quite ready for that, but I think it's definitely coming.
Dan Siemers (15:23):
I agree.
Dr. Mike Overton (15:24):
We probably got 125, $150 premium for a male beef calf versus a female in, in some markets
Dan Siemers (15:29):
We, yeah, we haven't seen that yet in my area, but I'm sure there's markets and I'm sure that if that starts evolving, that will take off.
Dr. Mike Overton (15:36):
Talk to some beef guys and they say, you may not see it, but it's factored into what price you're getting for that blended beef calf. So it's definitely gonna be there, I think, in the future.
Scott (15:45):
Yeah. Do you think there's any, uh, and this is an off the wall question, but a a, any place for embryo transfer in this whole thing?
Dr. Mike Overton (15:52):
Oh, absolutely. We see some of the more progressive herds really taking advantage of that, whether it's IVF or traditional variant, you know, pickup and, uh, yeah, I see that's gonna continue. There's some herds that utilize it for their primary means of reproductive management. Okay. And again, that's something else I looked at 20 years ago. It didn't make sense at the time. And now fast forward we've gotten so much better, more efficient that Yeah. It's, it's getting to be widespread. Yeah.
Dan Siemers (16:18):
Now if you, if you just look at just what trans OVAs been able to do. Yep. That's point in their, in their short history, it's been phenomenal. We were one of their first satellite centers, uh, in the Midwest. And uh, now they're, they're, they're everywhere. And, and the labs are everywhere. It's, uh, the whole IVF thing has really taken off.
Dr. Mike Overton (16:38):
19 years ago I got asked by a certain individual, could we see, uh, IVF and em real trends for being my sole source of reproductive performance management. No. Semen looked at the things and at the time it wasn't quite efficient enough. And I said, no, now we're seeing widespread application. 'cause just of what you've mentioned there, you've gotten so good efficiencies have brought the cost down and, uh, yeah, huge genetic advantage too.
Scott (17:07):
So how widespread and where, where will it go do you think? How far can it go?
Dr. Mike Overton (17:12):
Oh, the larger herds, when we get more and more internal, uh, development, uh, we've seen a lot of these guys put their own systems in place or they're purchasing, um, pre-made embryos from a service like that. Um, so, so putting the embryos in is not that difficult. That's a skill people can learn. Where it's been really interesting in seeing some of these large, more progressive dairies actually develop their own labs and have their own donor cows, so donor animals to, uh, produce those embryos. And then you actually get the, uh, more efficient use of the sex semen on the more elite sis and you can really dramatically make some good progress.
Dan Siemers (17:51):
Well, it's, it's what we do all the time, right? It's, uh, it's our, our, um, most profitable business is our genetic side. So we're, we're, we're doing that all the time. We've got, uh, my son Jordan, uh, is, uh, uh, always working on the genetic side and, and yeah, it's, uh, it's a cool, it's a cool business for us.
Dr. Tom Overton (18:15):
And Dan was telling me before we got on that, you know, you're using, you know, a lot less beef semen than maybe some dairies are only because of that business model that you have, particularly your farm.
Dan Siemers (18:23):
Yeah. And, and it's because we've doubled, uh, here in the last couple years. So we've, we've had to step up replacements, uh, uh, to a much larger herd, but that'll all at some point in time and, and we need the, uh, the recipients. So even if we're making in our herd, if we're making too many females, it's okay because that, um, their use as a recipient is certainly brings extra value. And if that means that we have extra heifers to sell, that's okay too. I mean, every, everybody has to run their own numbers.
Dr. Mike Overton (18:52):
That's right. That's right. And, and I've seen that more and more too. These guys that are planning expansions, they're thinking ahead and they're starting to hit those females producers very early.
Dan Siemers (19:02):
Yeah. It's the only way anymore, uh, uh, uh, especially the really big dairies. Yeah. Yeah. They, uh, they're, they're looking to their heifer pen before they're configuring out how many new rotaries they can put up. Right. And, and for some of these dairies, that's about the speed of which they're going.
Dr. Mike Overton (19:18):
Well, and another interesting thing, I was, I was talking to someone here this week, um, is the challenge that some of the guys that are trying to identify animals for export, they can't find shipments. And so now some of these, uh, uh, international companies are looking to contract with some of the larger producers to actually have them go away from the beef cross back to females sex semen in order to fuel contracts to export.
Dan Siemers (19:44):
That's absolutely what's happening. Yep.
Scott (19:48):
Interesting. You'd said that, uh, during one of your talks that you, uh, were quantifying the impact of not enough heifers. Uh, can you get a little, get a little granular with that? Uh, what were some of the numbers you presented in that presentation?
Dr. Mike Overton (20:01):
So, yeah, so lemme need a little backdrop around what I did. So identified about 12 herds that between the years 20 21, 22 to the follow up period of 2324, these herds decreased. The number of heifers
Scott (20:17):
Caving were these all across U the us. Across the
Dr. Mike Overton (20:18):
Us Yep. Yep. These were Holstein herds. They decreased the number of heifers calving in by at least two percentage points. And they also decreased the replacement rate in the 20 21, 22 year period to the 2324. So 2324 was less than the previous, compared those herds to herds that actually increased. So they maintain or increase the replacement heifer production and the maintainer increased replacement rate. So now these herds are serving as their own controls compared to themselves. But we're comparing the differences across the year patterns. And what we found is that, uh, if you look at, uh, daisy milk for an animal leaving the herd, those short herds compared to the, what I call surplus herds, they actually kept cows 25 days longer in lactation. And then people think that sounds good, but the net impact was they actually had an average of seven pounds less milk per day over the last 30 days of that animal's life before she was sold.
Dr. Mike Overton (21:20):
The other thing I saw was that animals going dry, those short herds actually had a longer time before going dry compared to the surplus. What that means is the surplus herds were making decisions. They didn't shorten their time to dry, they simply got rid of the longer tail, which yielded a, a short decrease. And the pounds of milk at dry off for about three to three and a half pounds less for those herds that suffered the shortage of heifers coming through. The final thing from a mastitis perspective was interesting was there was about a 13 percentage point difference in the percent of cows with two or more cases of mastitis. And guess which group of herds had increase in chronic mastitis? It's those that did not have enough heifers and they were forced to retain cows longer. So yeah, that was a, I considered that kind of an early or premature look at things. I wanna go back and revisit those some with more herds. But, uh, yeah, it was pretty powerful. We were able to show
Dan Siemers (22:22):
That. Any chance on that though, that some of those dairy producers were looking at those cows and keeping 'em in milk longer so their beef was worth more when they went across the scale? 'cause they just weighed more
Dr. Mike Overton (22:33):
Potentially. And if it wasn't for the lack of heifers coming through, I might have suggested that as a potential voluntary decision. But uh, that's why I required both of those factors to be present. Right. So the assumption was they kept cows longer 'cause they didn't have the replacement efforts coming in. Sure.
Dr. Mike Overton (22:49):
So the directionality based on days milk supported that. But, uh, it's possible 'cause we do see more beef. But what I've tried to convince people of or, or educate people around is that when we keep a market cow, cow destined for market, let's, let's take a DNB cow. Yeah. They do not breed cow. For most herds, the threshold for replacing that cow with a heifer, it's somewhere probably between 1670 pounds. Okay. So when we don't have a heifer, instead of replacing her, let's say at 65 pounds, we might keep her all the way to 55 or 50 pounds. Right. That represents a lost opportunity if we'd had a good heifer to come in and take her place. So that's what I'm trying to
Dan Siemers (23:29):
Get at. But the dairyman does get to brag at the coffee shop, how much he got for his cold cop
Dr. Mike Overton (23:44):
People love that. Love that. There you go. Touche. You're you're dead on. I
Scott (24:05):
Any, any other key uh, elements of the, some of the presentations you gave this? So we need to, to, to go
Dr. Mike Overton (24:11):
Well today, um, I spent a fair bit of time in the main presentation talking about, um, what we call heifer completion rate. So when we start to try to plan how many heifers do we need to produce, there's two main factors that go into that calculation. One is, what is my anticipated or historical replacement rate of the herd? 'cause that dictates how many cows per year I expect I have to replace. 'cause heifers come in, cows go out. That's basically, it's a positive pressure system and a stable herd size. And, uh, so heifer completion rate is the second part of that. So that when you breed to produce your heifers, you know how many, once they're born alive, what's the expectation for the percent of those that actually make it to calving themselves. Now many people in the industry kind of have a falsely high assumption of what that number is.
Dr. Mike Overton (25:00):
When you talk to people, many people say, well, I'm, I don't know for sure, but I'm probably 90 over 90%. Well, I had 65 herds data on that I collected just in the last year. And of those 65 herds, the median heifer completion rate was 76%. The inter quartile range was 70 to 82%. So going from a lower quartile to upper quartile, that's not the full range, but most of those herds were in that 75 to 80%, um, completion. Now, a lot of people had the same response you give me right now. That's pretty bad. What I try to tell people though is hires not necessarily better lowers not necessarily worse. You need to understand the reasons within these different stages of loss. Obviously a dead calf is a bad scenario. That's a bad one. And I looked at a, uh, deaths from live born to 90 days and the median was 4%.
Dr. Mike Overton (26:01):
So that's actually much better than it has been in years past. Yeah. And then I looked at the mortality from 91 to 365 days and it was again, 4%. Is that, is that surprising to you that those numbers are the same? It was a little surprising. The interquartile ranges were very similar. Almost identical, but not exactly the same. But it just goes to show we, we do have some post weaning health challenges from many herds. Um, and I, I drew that line at 90 days, which is a little bit late, but a lot of times we start to see the health issues come in there. But I did it intentionally 'cause I wanted to try to capture all the pre-weaning information and I didn't know exactly where to put that. Um, so those are definitely two things that contribute to low heifer completion rate that are bad.
Dr. Mike Overton (26:45):
Yeah. But that gets us to 92%. Yeah. But if my math is correct, I cowboy that. And then if you look at, uh, the percent that actually failed to conceive once they reached 12 months, so again, those numbers were somewhere around five, 6% failed to conceive. Now you can make that number even lower by extending the breeding window, but I don't think you want to do that. 'cause then you're gonna get cal heifers pregnant late end up having fat older heifers at Calvin, which is not good for first lactation performance or survivability. And then there's another five or 6% that once they get pregnant, actually it's 4% that failed to eCab themselves. And that could be for a variety of reasons, including abortion, breeding, remorse. Maybe I shouldn't have bred that half or after all or bred it too late. So there's, there's different reasons I didn't get into that in this dataset.
Dr. Mike Overton (27:40):
But then you have the remaining things or heifers sold before 90 days, which was essentially zero in this dataset because I excluded all animals that, I mean all herds that were selling animals on the basis of genetic testing or herds that produced heifers for a sister dairy. And if I included those, the heifer completion rates would've looked awful. And, but I would've been kind of artificial. But we did see some animals sold between 91 and 365. And that goes back to the health issue probably at that time, getting rid of some heifers that maybe have had some chronic respiratory disease or some other issues. That's something that you could reduce by better management. But the flip side is once you have 'em, you don't wanna perpetuate 'em. So
Dan Siemers (28:25):
I was, I was gonna jump in and say there, Mike, from a dairyman perspective Yep. If they're gonna die, you want 'em to die early as
Dr. Mike Overton (28:31):
Soon as possible. Yeah. Because they're going to die.
Dan Siemers (28:33):
Because the longer that you're putting down in a year of age, if she could have died at, at three months of age, look at all the days that you saved. So from a dairyman perspective, I i, I know that it sounds bad to say those words, but it's kind of true. Yeah. If she's not any good, the earlier you can make that decision, the better.
Dr. Mike Overton (28:49):
Ask any feedlot manager operator if they're gonna have deads, they want 'em day one, not day 100 or whatever the end point is. Yeah. Uh, for sure. Yeah. 'cause they're lessening those inputs.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (29:01):
So are are heifers, are they entering the herd younger now to compensate for the low inventories?
Dr. Mike Overton (29:09):
That's a really interesting point that I'm not sure I agree with. I mean, I know it's a question, but there's a little bit of a, of a tugging going on. Yeah. So there's so in industry that recognize that as a whole, we're not growing heifers to the size they should be a calving. And so one knee jerk reaction would be to say, Hey, Mr. Producer, I think you should delay breeding your heifers 45 or 60 days, or in some extreme cases, 90 days in order to get heifers bigger at calving. Well, what I've shown is that is beneficial if your endpoint is simply looking at projected milk production first lactation. But if you follow those animals through first and get into second lactation, you realize pretty quickly that's not an advantage to that because these older heifers and presumably fatter over conditioned heifers have our higher risk of being, uh, removed in first lactation. And so that projected 3 0 5 milk is kind of an overestimate of what we really see the survivors do pretty well, but there's not as many survivors as if you had a more moderate, every time I've looked at this and I've done a lot of large data sets, um, the optimal age at first calving is somewhere 22 and a half to 24 months for Holsteins and for jerseys subtract out about three quarters of a month. And you're in the same window.
Dr. Mike Overton (30:34):
So a little earlier but not drastically revealed drastic.
Scott (30:37):
Right, right. So, Mike, how short on heifers are we? So we got people like Dan over here. He's doing it right. He's not short. There's others that aren't. How short are we
Dr. Mike Overton (30:48):
As an in, as a industry? If you look at some of the numbers put out through USDA, they compared January one this year. And they looked at historical heifer inventory as a percent of the cows. And there was a graph I presented in one of my talks. This is the lowest we've been since 1991. Now if you think back into the, the nineties, we were reading everything with conventional semen. We had no six semen. Reproductive performance was, let's just call it very poor. It was not good at all. And I'm gonna venture to say 90 plus percent of the herds failed to produce enough heifers even when they're running, you know, replacement rates of 36, 30 7%. So to have our current inventory as a percent of cows lower than it was back in the early nineties, to me, is a bit scary. We had it low then because we couldn't do any better. We have it low now because we've made in some cases poor decisions.
Dan Siemers (31:46):
Yeah. We've more than doubled preg rates.
Dr. Mike Overton (31:48):
Yeah. More
Dan Siemers (31:49):
Than way more like two and a half times. And, and so if you think about those numbers in that context, it's crazy.
Dr. Mike Overton (31:56):
Yes, it is. It's crazy. That, and that, it really hit me when I was looking at that, going back to 1991, is the, the number that they previously said was a low holy conventional average pre rate in California, um, by the time I got there in the late nineties was about 15, 16%. So early nineties it was presumably a little bit lower. Yeah.
Dan Siemers (32:18):
Like 13.
Dr. Mike Overton (32:20):
That was mad. That was Minnesota, Wisconsin. Yes, it was at the same time. Yep. In the late nineties, early two thousands. So when I say reproductive performance was not very good, it was very poor compared to today, we've made remarkable strides. Genetics, transition management, you know, just reproductive management as a whole. And it's, it's a bit depressing when you think about the strides we've made and yet we've fallen behind.
Scott (32:47):
So, you
Dr. Mike Overton (32:47):
Know, is it bad decisions entirely? Right. Because doesn't, doesn't the decision depend on the herd? It depends on the herd. And they're guys that have taken that, let's say $900 calf that value and taken it to the bank and been very happy. But it's kinda like, uh, pay me now or pay me later. You know? And, and that's the game some people have played. So, uh, there are herds that did not necessarily go that deep into the chasing that and are sitting pretty right now. And, but some of these herds really got burned when heifers were truly, um, in, uh, oversupply. And you were selling heifers for a lot less than it cost you to, to raise 'em to that point. So there are some guys that still have some, uh, probably lingering nightmares from those times that have, uh, probably react. We, we
Dan Siemers (33:34):
Have some new genetic things to help us though. This, uh, calf wellness dollars that Zoetis has come out with, I think is a real thing. And I think more and more producers are gonna look at that as a way to maybe help that non-complete, uh, uh, percentage. And, uh, and I I, I think that once again, genetics can kind of come to the rescue and help a lot with that, like they have within a lot of other areas. Uh, I I think that, uh, one of the, one of the biggest things that producers are gonna start looking at on genetics is calf wellness.
Dr. Mike Overton (34:03):
I think that's a really good point. 'cause one of the biggest issues affecting dairy replacement efforts obviously is respiratory disease. There is a trait out there that helps to identify those, uh, opportunities to improve that. That is definitely something that could be taken from a management perspective to try and prove and create a more resilient, healthy replacement animal.
Scott (34:24):
Micah can only assume that this is going to impact the available milking cows in the us the total output. Um, has that started yet? And if not, when and how much?
Dr. Mike Overton (34:37):
So the, if you look at the data on a milk per cow or total milk shipped, it's kind of up and down a little bit. And sometimes we've had some months where a little bit surprising where production was, where it was. I think producers are probably doing a better job with the cows that they are holding on to, even though
Scott (34:55):
They, but they're gonna age out. They
Dr. Mike Overton (34:56):
Are gonna age out. But we've already got some producers taking steps. Now the problem is taking steps now to change breeding decisions is two and a half, three years down the road before they come in. Yep. So it's, we we're interested in for some interesting times for the next couple years, I think.
Scott (35:11):
Yeah. And I guess the next question is, uh, so less milk, better prices.
Dr. Mike Overton (35:17):
So Albert Dere, and you guys all know Albert
Dan Siemers (35:50):
To get. It's, it's kind of both sides of the equation right now because we also have this, uh, expanded processing. So we have more processing and less heifers coming. So there's, we're gonna actually see, uh, I think in our business coming up, something we haven't seen in a long time that's actual buyers of milk, whether they be co-ops or private, actually having to pay up more for milk and not giving us more discounts or deducts every month trying to figure out. You hate to think about
Dr. Mike Overton (36:15):
That, don't you,
Dan Siemers (36:16):
It really does my heart a disservice. Yeah, I, I'm feeling terrible about that because all that we've seen in our business over the last however many years is yeah. Reduced premiums, reduced, uh, um, uh, you know, PPDs or whatever it is that they can fit, that everyone can figure out how to pay us less. Those things are magically gonna start to disappear when we have more demand and less supply.
Dr. Mike Overton (36:41):
And you know how important it is when you've got a facility to keep those slots full. Absolutely. And if you're a processor, you've invested big bucks into a processing capacity, you wanna make sure you get the milk coming through. Yep. To your point, that could be make for some interesting, uh, future events.
Scott (36:57):
Interesting. Uh, Mike, any other things we need to cover during this conversation? We hit most of the high tops. Well,
Dr. Mike Overton (37:03):
I'll just say one quick thing about sheer completion. We spent a lot of time talking about that. That is something that's critical for a producer to know, but it's a terrible, terrible metric to evaluate performance. There's so much lag involved with that, that there's far better ways of monitoring, uh, changes in management, trying to identify opportunities to intervene. So again, important metric to know for planning future needs future terrible, terrible metric for monitoring their heifer performance. And producers need to understand the difference there.
Scott (37:38):
Interesting. Alright. Alright. Anything else? Not, uh, what I'd like you guys to do is just kind of sum it up for, for the audience, uh, couple key takeaways.
Speaker 5 (37:47):
Tonight's last call question is brought to you by NiaShrue Precision Release Niacin. Niacin is a proven vasodilator for heat stress reduction and a powerful anti lipolytic agent for lowering high blood nefa in transition cows protected with Balchem’s proprietary encapsulation technology. You can be sure it is being delivered where and when your cows need it. Learn more at balchem.com/niashure.
Dan Siemers (38:14):
Uh, I'm, I'm happy to, uh, to say that I think I finished my drink first.
Scott (38:18):
So I,
Dan Siemers (38:20):
So I, I think we have, usually
Scott (38:21):
That's when we, we wrap it up is when I finished mine. I haven't yet.
Dan Siemers (38:24):
Right. No, it's okay. That was a, we could keep right on talking
Scott (38:30):
Did, I certainly did.
Dan Siemers (38:33):
And, and
Scott (38:34):
If we go much longer, this
Dan Siemers (38:35):
Is the, the world of, of non-compete rates, uh, uh, um, on, on what we have going on at heifers that we're discussing today, I think when dairymen actually see how bad that their numbers are, 'cause my kid and on the head most dairymen, when you ask 'em think, oh, I get 90% of mine through no one gets 90% of theirs
Dr. Mike Overton (38:55):
Through and that 65 herd data set, I have 189%. Yep. That's it. Yeah. That's the, that was the max.
Dan Siemers (39:00):
Right. So at the end of the day, uh, I, I think if people really look at their real numbers and think about it, it's gonna change their reality to how it is that they look at their heifer management and maybe how, you know for sure and how many that they're gonna keep. And, uh, and I think no one has really put a lot of time and effort into thinking this through and it's gonna change how we look at it.
Dr. Mike Overton (39:25):
That's truly my hope, to be honest with you. We've been talking about this for a while and hope to be able to raise more awareness about this and to identify, hey, it is not where I thought it was. What are my opportunities to go back and take action and do a better job?
Dan Siemers (39:39):
If you can measure it, you can fix it. That's
Dr. Mike Overton (39:40):
Exactly right.
Dan Siemers (39:41):
That's exactly right.
Scott (39:42):
Ah, great quote. Yeah. Play any final thoughts for the audience?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (39:49):
Well, great topic here. It's
Scott (39:51):
Been a lot of fun.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (39:52):
It has been. This has been a really fun one. So, no, I I'm, I'm really shocked about the numbers in, in the heifer completion rates here. So very eye-opening.
Dr. Mike Overton (40:03):
I think many people have feel the same way. Yeah. That's why I made sure I had a lot of herds. So wasn't just a few herds that would, you know, might be off, but there's 65 herds. And, and one thing I did mention here, this is a closing deal. Most of those were Holsteins.
Scott (40:17):
Okay. I
Dr. Mike Overton (40:17):
Do have about 14 or 15 jersey herds. Okay. And the key differences between the Holstein and Jersey herds, which probably doesn't surprise anyone that's familiar with the jerseys. We had a, I I saw about 50% mortality risk in the jerseys compared to the Holtons.
Scott (40:32):
Okay.
Dr. Mike Overton (40:33):
And, uh, a lot of that's in the young calf of course, but there was some surprising carry over to your point earlier in that 91 to 365 day age. So, and a little bit lower, somewhat surprising, uh, reproductive performance mm-hmm
Scott (40:50):
Yeah. You know, one of the things I should have asked is, uh, what's plans for future research?
Dr. Mike Overton (40:57):
I want to continue looking at this, uh, heifer deal and try to, um, hone in on what are our true AP most appropriate targets for growth and calving size, age. Um, and I think we need to look more, I did a project preliminarily before I did at Dairy Science looking at predicting her individual future mature body weight. So I think we need to do more of that to be able to better, uh, estimate what this animal's projected mature weight is and use that to set her breeding targets, her growth targets, her calving weight targets versus using a whole herd average.
Dr. Tom Overton (41:34):
Interesting. Tom, any final thoughts? Yeah, so Micah, you know, I really appreciated how you kind of got us to, not oversimplify how we look at completion rate and things like that. I think that's really important. Uh, but I also liked in your paper, you kind of circled back and said, you know, we really have to put a premium on really, really raising these heifers Well, right. And, and I think in these times, you know, there's not an excuse for for raising lots of shoddy heifers out there. We really need to double down on our management things like that to make sure we have quality animals kind of come through the pipeline.
Dr. Mike Overton (42:03):
Agreed. And you've heard me say this before and I'm, you've probably said it yourself, but we can grow 'em before they calf. We can grow 'em after the calf, but we don't really want to be diverting nutrients from production towards growth as a first lactation animal. There's too much potential to leave on the table by not having 'em grown.
Dan Siemers (42:20):
Well, one other thing to bring up is there's probably more heifers today that are grown, uh, by custom razors than what there ever has been. Yeah. Right. And so maybe this is more data to take back to the, to, to those people as well and to see if we can't do a better job because everyone, dairy producers, a lot of us like getting rid of some headaches, like moving those off, uh, those cattle offsite from a nutrient management standpoint, from a response, you know, a land value, feed value, all those things. There's a lot of reasons to do it, but maybe this is a time that we can look and refocus on making sure that they're doing as good a job as what we'd like them to. Also,
Dr. Mike Overton (43:01):
That is a huge opportunity. We've got a lot of operations that are working off a per diem approach and where there's, you know, the incentive basically is not very high for raising good quality. It's for keeping 'em alive. But that's an opportunity when you do some of these customer raising to work out mutually beneficial contracts for both the producer and the razor. So there's a win-win proposition to get good quality heifers produced and, uh, you're not taking advantage of each other. And, but I've seen more and more I've seen herds, especially out of Wisconsin, that are going together and producing, you know, creating their own kind of mini calf ranch by going in with, uh, other producers. Now they have control over it. They understand the cost and they might pay a per diem or something just on the yardage fee, but then they control the feed allocation. Well
Dan Siemers (43:50):
And you can feed more calories, right. Because, uh, even though it might cost you a dollar or, or your cost might be a dollar more a day, it probably in those first 60 days, we'll pay for itself in a better heifer down the road if we can get enough, get more calories in 'em.
Dr. Mike Overton (44:04):
Well that's one of the points I made today in, instead of delaying the breeding, look at what you would spend by delaying breeding 45 or 60 days. Take half of that. Let's redistribute that better nutrition in the first six months, nine months of life and still have 'em in an early time. You'll have a bigger, better grown heifer and you'll save that extra 45 or 60 days of growth Perfect for time in heifer operation. That to me is a, is a, is a good situation to go to.
Scott (44:34):
Dan, any final comments you wanna share with the
Dan Siemers (44:37):
Oh, I think I have plenty of comments.
Scott (44:51):
We could go back, we could take us another couple
Dan Siemers (44:54):
Hours.
Scott (44:54):
I'm just, we could be Joe Rogan here, go through three. We
Dan Siemers (44:57):
Could, we could get cigars out too. And I don't know, I
Dr. Mike Overton (45:00):
Have some up up in the room.
Dan Siemers (45:01):
We don't want the sprinklers to go off though. That'd be a bad day.
Scott (45:04):
We've taken it to a new level.
Dan Siemers (45:05):
We have cigars.
Scott (45:06):
We've not done that yet. But yeah, I think we just have. Yeah,
Dan Siemers (45:10):
Well we haven't and we've just discussed it.
Scott (45:12):
Dr. Mike Overton (45:16):
Oh no, this was a very enjoyable
Scott (45:20):
Discussion. This has been fun. I appreciate
Dr. Mike Overton (45:21):
The opportunity.
Scott (45:22):
Yeah, no, this has been fun. I wanna thank you guys for joining us. This is No absolutely. So no thank you guys for joining us and, and to our audience, I hope you have had as much fun as we have. Uh, we've certainly learned a lot. And, uh, so hope you learned something, hope you had some fun. And I hope to see you next time here at the Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 5 (45:43):
We'd love to hear your comments or ideas for topics and guests. So please reach out via email@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 a h.marketing at chem.com. Balchem’s real science lecture series of webinars takes place on the first Tuesday of every month with the top research and nutrition topics that will impact your business. We also include small ruminant, monogastric, and companion animal focused topics throughout the year. Visit balchem.com/realscience to see the upcoming topics and to register for future webinars. You can also access past webinars and search for the topics most important to you.