Beef on dairy calves explored at symposium

Justin Waggoner, beef cattle specialist, Kansas State University, gave an overview of what beef on dairy means during the June 9 Beef Empire Days Beef on Dairy Symposium. The event focused on how dairy operations can utilize beef genetics to add value to their calves from dairy calves.

Waggoner said terminal crossbreeding isn’t a new practice and producers have been doing it for some time.

“It’s certainly an issue that the industry is talking about, and it certainly increased in the last few years,” he said. “I think there’s a great story here for the cattle industry as well.”

Being from the academic side, Waggoner set out to find the data on the subject and found several different surveys, one in particular was published in 2020. In that survey, matings of beef bulls to dairy cows had essentially doubled from 2015 to 2019.

Waggoner says the focus should be on why there was an increase. He said, “Why did we see this tremendous change in dairyman looking to be more aggressive in their [artificial insemination] programs?”

According to the authors, Waggoner said, the change was based on the supply of dairy replacement females. Using sexed semen has given dairy producers the ability to produce more heifer calves.

Although some fertility is given up when we do that, there seems to still be a good supply of dairy heifers for those looking for replacements. This could allow them to put a little more focus on the beef end, adding value to the calves already being produced on the dairy.

“The other side of this really comes back to the value of that calf,” Waggoner said.

The calves coming out of the dairy are often discounted, but those same calves with beef crossbreeding could garner $50 to $175 more per head.

“It’s also an issue of revenue,” he said. “If you look at the reason that they’re doing this is because we improve that feeding performance and carcass traits on those dairy crossbred cattle.”

Waggoner said 47% of the 31,000 dairies in the United States only breed about 10% of their dairy heifers with beef semen.

“What that tells me is these dairymen are using some of their better genetics to build replacement heifers,” he said. “They’re not putting beef semen into a lot of these heifers, at least not at this point, because it was less than 10%.”

The story is different when it comes to lactating cows. The survey Waggoner evaluated showed 38% of dairies were breeding 11% to 25% of the lactating cows to beef sires, while the other third was breeding more than 35% of their lactating cows to beef.

With 2020 Select Sires data, Waggoner said the company sold 6.5 to 7 million units of beef semen placed in dairy cows. On average, it takes 3 to 4 units of semen to produce a calf. That’s potentially 1.6 to 2 million beef on dairy calves that could be produced in 2021 from those matings.

“We’ve got the potential of around 2 million head of calves being produced in this type of a system,” he said. “If you consider the total 2020 U.S. calf crop was about 35 million calves. These beef on dairy crosses, in essence, could make up somewhere between two to 5% of that calf crop.”

Supply chain

When it comes to beef calves on a dairy, they’re raised a little bit different than beef cow-calf production systems. Traditional beef calves, once they leave their farm or ranch of origin, could go a couple different routes. Beef on dairy calves are born at the dairy, taken from the cow on their first day of life and sent to another location.

“Simple animal science—we need a pregnancy and a calf to initiate lactation,” Waggoner said. “And so a lot of times these calves are going to be marketed from these dairies at less than a week of age.”

A lot of those calves are often sold as one- or two-day old calves, and transported to either a calf ranch or raiser.

Later these calves are transitioned from the waste milk diet to a dry ration and then when they reach 300 to 600 pounds they’re moved and, ultimately, might end up in a feedlot in western Kansas.

Waggoner said there are key traits a dairy producer will look for when producing those calves that will end up in the calf market. Fertility, calving ease and calf value are some things to consider for the breeder, while health and growth are important to a calf raiser.

Waggoner says the calf raiser’s goal is to keep the calves healthy and growing, which takes a lot of time and effort.

As we get to the feedlot segment, health again rises to the surface, as does growth, performance and carcass merit.

Performance potential

These beef on dairy calves are higher performing than one might think. In data from Select Sires, Waggoner said 46 head of Angus-Holstein crosses were sired by Angus bulls who were in the top 10% of the breed for ribeye area, and top 30% for marbling. Reaching 1,500 pounds at 247 days on feed, the calves gained a total of 902 pounds or 3.6 pounds of average daily gain.

“If I didn’t put that those were Angus-Holstein crosses, most of us in this room would say that’s a pretty exciting, relatively strong set of performance data from these set of calves,” he said.

The carcass data showed promise as well. Carcass weights were a little over 900 pounds and 98% reached Choice.

“I think it’s important to recognize maybe what the challenges are and what some of the opportunities are with these calves,” he said. “I see one of the things that we have to recognize—health was on the important list of criteria for several steps in the supply chain.”

Considering health and management of these calves is going to be of paramount importance, he said. Special consideration needs to be on the transportation stress involved in beef on dairy calves.

Beef on dairy calves fight a stigma that they have lower performing potential compared to their beef counter parts. There is a belief that they’re going to be large framed, lighter muscled cattle, and they might be lacking in carcass merit, but Waggoner disagrees after looking at the data.

“If you consider some of the issues with these calves, I think that stigma is probably one of the things that is one of the greatest challenges,” he said. “They check a lot of these boxes, and it does lend over into the marketing and how we’re able to move these cattle through the supply chain and maybe some of the resistance that might be out there kind of moving forward as we go in this industry.”

Kylene Scott can be reached at 620-227-1804 or [email protected].