Latest / Talking Dairy / What makes a dairy-beef calf worth buying? | Ep. 135

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What makes a dairy-beef calf worth buying? | Ep. 135 · Talking Dairy

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: Kiora and welcome to Talking Dairy.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host Jack McGowan from DairyNZ.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's great to have you with us.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: The decisions you make at mating and in the first days of a calf's life affect what happens to that calf next.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: But dairy farmers do not always get to hear what the person buying and finishing their calves actually needs.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: In this episode, we're bringing both sides of that conversation together.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Joe Sheridan is involved in the demonstration at Owl Farm in Cambridge, where the team has spent seven years working towards giving every calf born on the dairy farm a purposeful life.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: And Annie O'Callaghan farms at Timata Station near Kitaya, where she buys around 1,100 unweaned calves as well as 500 more calves at weaning, and she finishes half as two-year-olds on a grass-based low-input system.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: And she also works as an A-B technician across the district.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Between them, Joe Sheridan and Annie O'Callaghan see a large part of the dairy beef supply chain.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: They have both learned what helps dairy beef work and where the challenges sit.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: We talk about breeding, calf health, finding the right buyer, agreeing on value, and building a relationship that works for both sides.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: Let's get into it.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Tienakurua, welcome to Talking Dairy.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Annie and Joe, where are you joining us from today?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, hey Jack.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Wrapped to be here.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm Annie O'Callaghan, studied agriculture after school, and I've been beef farming ever since.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: My now husband, Ryan O'Callaghan, and I had an opportunity six years ago to move up to seventh generation family farm.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: We were 19 and 21 years old.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So Hubby came up with the grand idea to rear calves to help pay off debt.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I got the ring on my finger and I've been managing the calf ring ever since.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm very proud to say that we just purchased the first part of the farm last month.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm joining you from my farm in the far, far north of Douglas Bay.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Congratulations, Annie.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well done.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Joe.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm calling in from the Waikato today.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: So born and bred down in Taranaki, but I've spent 25 years up in the Waikato helping out in the dairy industry, mainly focused on future farm systems, and hence how I've kind of moved into the space where we're thinking about beef on dairy calf opportunities and how that fits into a wider system context.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: Joe, we'll start with you.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: How did our farm approach non-replacement calves seven years ago?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the journey sort of began, Jack, when we started thinking about what our future focused farm system need to look like.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the big things that we do quite well is ask the generations that are coming through, because they are the people who will be running our farms and solving our challenges and looking for our opportunities of the future.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that we got back quite strongly from our students was about these calves that were going off at four days old for processing.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: And they kind of thought, well, is there a better way to have a purposeful life for each of those animals?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: And when we started asking about what purposeful life meant, they kind of said, well, mating with an end result in mind.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And if that calf can have one winter and one summer under its belt, we think that that's a good outcome.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: But it's more about the intent of breeding a calf that has is destined to add value somewhere in the industry.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of how we started off the journey.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Please talk us through how that's gone at high level.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: From a metric point of view, we have this ideal view of achieving 100%.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't got there.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: It is a journey, and there's been ebbs and flows.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: When we first started, I think 27% of our calves had what we call a purpose for life.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that was really a calf that was destined as a replacement to heifer in our herd, plus the odd IHC calf.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we used to call that dairy beef.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was just the biggest bull calf we could find that had nice markings.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, since that journey, we kind of started thinking about where was the opportunity to utilize technology to enable us to make better choices along the way.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: And a couple of things started to come on the scene.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: The first opportunity we got was with Wagyu contracts.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we were able to secure some contracts that allowed us to produce Wagyu carves.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: It worked quite well.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: We were getting good money for it.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: It allowed us to use AI straws through our extended mating period.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And for about three years to four years, that went quite well for us.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: What we started to find out was the impact on our gestation length was becoming disadvantageous to us.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: And we were having trouble with the marking of the cars, trying to distinguish what was a wagu or not.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we had many, the odd replacement heifer that turned out to be a wagger.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we kind of moved away from that.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, what was really exciting in the industry was the advent of wearables and sex semen.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a natural transition for us to utilize that technology, start selecting from our highest genetic merit cows, and use beef semen on our lower genetic merit cows.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then we also were able to use AI heifer synchrony and kind of at our peak, we started to get up to about 80% purposeful lives for calves.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so that kind of has sort of been our journey.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: So from down at 27% up to about 80%, which is kind of, I think, the sweet spot for us.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: The next 20% is proving harder and harder for us to achieve on a QE cross herd.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: Cool, and we'll get into that, I'm sure.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: Annie, when you took over Temata Station, it was only running Frisian bulls, but you've moved away somewhat from that.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: Talk us through that.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we're still rearing Frisian bulls at the moment.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're just not solely focused on buying five white point Frisian bulls, which is typically um how the market sells them to use.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we're very open to buying beef over dairy or even crossbred unmarked well-framed bulls.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: The reason we've gone away from the YKEDO so much is that trucking was taking between eight to ten hours on a good day to get these calves from the sales, which is really where all the Frisian herds are up north.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: The trucking was expensive.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: It took a while for the calves to recover physically from that.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I started looking around as an A-B tech, a local A B tech, started shoulder tapping my farmers up here, and most of the farmers up north are running crossbred herds, so a JA F8 herd.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I started asking the question how can I utilize these herds that are right on my doorstep, you know, within 20, 40 minutes, where I can get calves that are probably just as good as the ones I'm getting from the Waikato.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: They just look a little bit different.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: They haven't got that five white points per se, as there's still lots of bobbies getting killed out in Northlands.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: What are you looking for in a calf?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what makes you think, yes, I'm gonna buy calves from that person or I'm gonna buy calves from them again?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I always like to think that a well-framed calf correlates into good carcass weight.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't always buy off of the markings, I'm always looking at the frame of the calf.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: A new thing that we've been starting to look at calves is IGG testing for colostrum.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if I can get information on whether the calves have had their colostrum or not, that's a huge bonus to me that I'll be looking at for at the sales, you just don't know where the calves have come from, their genetic makeup, what their history is.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: So really it's just one for all kind of thing at the sale yards.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: And have you started looking at the genetics of the calves, or are you still mostly looking at kind of what the herd looks like and then the health side?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we've been doing a little bit of work in the dairy beef opportunities, a little pitched uh beef and lamb.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: The dairy beef progeny test has so much information on the bulls around nowadays, and there is a 34 kilo carcass weight difference between the top 10% bulls and the bottom 10% bulls.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if I know the genetic makeup of the calf that it's been bred to a really good bull, 34 kilos for me on a$9 payout, that's over$300 on the hook that I'll be getting simply just from having better genetics on that calf.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're doing a little bit of a trial at the moment, actually, Jack, on the farm, where we're trying to run five white point Frisian bulls next door to calves born from crossbred cows but with really good beef bulls over.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And my question is will the good beef genetics be enough to offset the jersey and the crossbred cow?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And will the bulls grow as good as, if not better than the five white point Frisian bulls?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Are your bulls from the dairy beef progeny testing program that you're choosing?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they are.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: We've got some of the last of the Charolet bull straws Kakahoo Jerry, and then for our cementau bulls, we're using Kira Maestro and Glenside Crumpy as well.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's pretty much$300 extra ahead for no work, purely just good genetics choosing of the bull offsetting the very cow.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: Now, Joe, you're on the other side.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Our farm has a crossbred herd and looking for buyers for your calves.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: Did you know any of what your, you know, calf rearers or beef farmers were looking for in a calf before you started changing what you were doing?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: So our only experience about beef on dairy was through these Wagyu contracts.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so we were very disassociated with the end product.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: All we knew is that we were aiming for a certain weight and a certain age before they could leave the farm and all that sort of stuff.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: So when we embarked on uh what we call that sort of dairy beef performance program, we didn't have buys for our calves.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the risk management we put in place was to have extra land and chicory.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we thought, well, if we can't get rid of these cars, we'll keep them and we'll grow them and we'll show people what these cars can do.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other thing we thought about doing was being so close to lifestyle blocks, we thought we'd just piecemeal sell them and we'd just start selling them off in lots of two and five and ten, and we'd try and educate our wider community about the value that these cars can provide and try and help grow the demand for these cars within our own local community.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that was kind of like the strategy we we had when we embarked on it.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it was all risk, but we did have some things in place that we thought, well, if we can't sell them, we'll either take them all through and we'll just trade off some of our land, or else we'll just try and cultivate a market locally.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: But what we did find, Jack, which was really amazing, is when we connected with the beef industry, and that was mainly through Bob Thompson and our local dairy beef calf opportunities uh project that we had going, I met these amazing people who were involved in the calf rearing space and the beef finishing space.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we started talking, and I kind of said to Bob about, I really want to connect with people who are looking for quality product and we want to be able to help service that need.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we ended up catching up with two buyers after that meeting, and those two buyers went on to buy our two lines of calves for the next couple of years, which has been amazing.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: But we needed to be connected because we didn't have those connections.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: The industry did that for us, yeah.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so you found a buyer, two buyers for those calves.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: How has that changed?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: Have you moved into a kind of like I don't know how to describe it, like talking about what else they might want?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Our relationship has evolved, definitely.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the way that we've split the buyers is one buyer buys all our early July-born Charolet, predominantly calves, and so they're kind of like our prime calf into market.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: So they were Kaku milestone until, of course, we've now run out of that semen.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the other buyer was buying everything which was mixed breeds, where we would do a bit of trial and error with different types of product that didn't necessarily have to have the marking characteristics, and they were buying everything that was landing pretty much through August and the early part of September.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: So two different buyers.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: What's happened is the first buyer, our July buyer, we now sit down prior to carving and we talk about the cost of rearing.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: So once the calf milk replacer price has been firmed down, we talk about how the market's been performing for the last year.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we analyze all the sale data that's come through from our local sale yards and we talk about what calves will land when and kind of where that price point is.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: For our August board buyer, the calf buyer actually sold his calf rearing unit and brought a finishing block.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: So he handed over his relationship to another guy and said, You like this guy, he wants to buy your calves.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we said, Wow, that's great.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we just swapped about.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: We swapped out one guy for another, and and the same relationship continued.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it was really interesting too.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: So, Joe, it's not that you got lucky, but you did get lucky with Bob Thompson, someone in the industry with lots of connections.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: And Annie, you have that advantage of going around many farms as an A-B technician that's allowed you to like find these people that you can work with.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: For someone that's not in your position, how do they do that?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: I am very lucky to have a local A B run, so it's quite easy.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've already got my foot in the door with contacts, and um, I can pretty easily bet my eyelashes at farmers and try and convince me to sell me their calves.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Farmers are the most lovely people around, man.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: They all love beer.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Buy them a box, go over to the farm, drink some beer with them, and get a breeding, a beef catalogue at the same time, and talk beef bills and just talk about what's important to you, what's important to the farmer.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just through conversations, I've managed to get one of my farmers vaccinating his herd for Salmonella, Lepto, and Covexin.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then now I know that I'm getting the passive transfer from his cows to the calves through IGG, and that's just been so important to me.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: But neither of us would have even known about that had we not had that conversation.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Joe, thoughts?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can't back my eyelids as nicely as Annie can, but I guess we try and do it through data and proven results.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, what we've tried to lean into is building a relationship with our buyers who are prepared to take some risks around the genetics, but also being able to get that feedback loop.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, how well are the calves grown?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: What's the mortality and the immunity like, reflect back on our early calf protocol, are they growing out well?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then hopefully that that information allows those buyers to do what effectively MAC did is to say, look, I can't buy your calves anymore, but this guy, he's really interested because he's heard how well they do.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, probably just by proven results using uh maybe the data and then making sure that we're keeping that feedback loop going is what line of calves went well and why.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we're thinking of changing to a smart slightly smaller calve or different marking or a gestation, and how will that impact you?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and can we feed that back?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, just kind of building on it that way, probably, Jack.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: There's a tension here, Annie.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: You only want bulls.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: Heifers grow slower, of course, and you can't mix them with bulls, so they don't fit your system.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: But Joe, you know, most dairy farmers have got heifers and you need to find a market for them.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: How do you approach that, Joe?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: So for us, we approach it by having a discount on our price point.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: So when we negotiate with our buyers, we negotiate as a mob, so we know roughly how many calves are going to be landing in a four to five week period.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll, you know, it's pretty much a 48% split either way.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we will sell at a slightly discounted value for all the calves to go, male or female.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: Pricing is where some of the well, we're a bit shy about talking about price and about committing to price.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: Annie, how do you approach that?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: With the heifers?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I know you don't buy heifers, but you can respond to that.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I actually will respond to that, Jack.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: I know there's a lot of older, maybe say more retired farmers out there who absolutely love heifers.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: They'll never go without them.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Heifers can be run in bigger mobs as well, so they're a lot less maintenance than bulls are, having the smaller mobs of bulls, and they're a lot easier on your infrastructure, your yards, they're a lot less standoff fish as bulls, maybe a little bit safer to be around, you could say.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: So there's definitely that market still for heifers out there.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: If I had to have a one-on-one relationship with a farmer who wanted me to take all of their calves, I would want to have that conversation about using sex semen, going to the beef side of things, on the males side of things, sorry, and potentially offering to pay a little bit more for those calves to offset the extra cost on the sex straw, which is about$40, and the loss in conception because there is a little bit of a loss there.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is, however, getting better and better every year.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: The lab people are doing amazing work out there, and the sex semen is really gonna be at the top of its game soon, I do think.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: Joe, you mentioned sitting down once you know the cost of calf rearing.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: Do some of these calves go to calf rearers or are they all reared at our farm?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: All of our beef on dairy calves are out the gate at between four to ten days.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: So July born, pretty much four days.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: So local buyer picks up at least twice a week.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Once it comes to August, when our numbers are dwindling a little bit, we tend to pick them up in lots of 12 to 15.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it could be up to potentially a week when they do the pickup.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: But our whole infrastructure is set up so that we can push through about 120 replacements through one side of the shed, and then we can get through about 220 on beef on dairy if they are constantly flowing through the doors.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because infrastructure is a really big part of being able to keep those calves healthy before they head out off on the farm.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and that is one of the challenges that we hear from farmers regarding doing beef on dairy is we often want to hold them a little bit longer than we might do with calves that are going for processing.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's that whole thing about the sale yards and what happens there is that, you know, they're probably the premium prices in that sort of 10-day bracket.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so just making sure you've got infrastructure and the people power to actually do those calves well up to that 10-day to attract that premium in the markets.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: I guess we have a slightly discounted price because if those calves are going that four days, that's saving up.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: We're feeding whole milk this year.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that saves us quite a lot of money in milk and time to keep those calves being fed during that early period here.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Now, Joe, you mentioned, you know, the last 22%, I think you said, you know, reaching 100% of calves, having a purposeful life is difficult.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: And part of that is our, you know, having calves from our heifers.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: Our farm has had a difficult heifer carving season this year.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: You've shared that on Facebook, so listeners can go and have a look at what our farm has talked about there.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: But can you give us a brief explanation of what happened and what you're changing as a result?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: That 20% that we talk about, Jackie, we understand where that comes from.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: We can start to see where the limitations are, where the opportunities might be for different farm systems.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: So for us, when we were supplying high BW replacement cars back into the industry, we were using things like heifer synchrony to allow us to have excess replacements, have more pressure on our sex seatment program for our mixed-age cows, and there was still a value-added product.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Just recently, we've moved into a grazing partnership where we don't have the same capacity to do heifer synchrony.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so it means that effectively we're creating bobbies out of our heifer mating, which means that we have to try and get more beef into our mixed-age dairy cows, which means that you get sort of less of that selection pressure and high genetic merits calves coming out of our mixed-age cows.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: So what we're always trying to do is juggle the amount of SGL, juggle the amount of sex semen versus forward pack and the beef part of it.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: So what we did last May 10 is that we have very well grown heifers and we saw the opportunity to try and look at a beef on the hoof program because we couldn't do heifer synchrony.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we chose bulls that were predominantly selected for ease of carving and low birth weight and Angus bull, with the idea that those cars would then go into a value-added beef program.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: What we found out quite interestingly is that for the first three weeks, we had 71% of the heifers calved without missing a beat.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we're like going, oh, yeah, this is going really well.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: The heifers were dropping the calves, cars were hitting the ground running and they were looking really good.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Our calf buyer was a little bit worried about that the cars would be too small, but the calves were coming in a fairly good way.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: After week three, pretty much from that point onward, we started having calving difficulties.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a lot to unpack in that situation.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And what we've probably learned the most from it is that genomics and understanding the bull contribution has come a long way, and we are so much better positioned to understand that side of it.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I really think we need to understand a lot more about the dam contribution and also about how we're growing calves within our feeding systems and the dairy herd.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we're still doing a little bit of DNA testing to figure out a few things.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: But like I said, we kind of go two steps forward, and sometimes we go one step back.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: We might have a line of calves that there's no value for them in the markets and they end up being bobby calves.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got to push forward, the market will change, the situation will change, we might go backwards a little bit, but then we've got to kind of look for the next opportunity or the next bit of technology that will help us move forward in that space.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: What have you decided to do this year with your heifers?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: We did try to see if we could get the heifer synchrony back on that farm again, but we have trouble with a Ford that has the potential to flood.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're doing the synchrony program, we cannot afford to not be able to cross cows back into the yard.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we've gone back to a bull program where we're jersey based, and we've had trouble with Jersey bulls over our heifers carving in the past too.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why I'm saying it's not a pure bull effect.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: There is a dam effect there.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we've got a couple of burray grays in there as well, just to see whether we've still got that capacity to look at beef on the hoof as well.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Part of our focus has shifted into other options within our dairy herd.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: So this year we've widened our pool of marker bulls.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we tended to use just one bull Kaku milestone.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: We've now shifted to two different Charolet bulls, Quantum and Fortress, and then we've also got a Kiwi Prime running in there as well, just to take that risk away from single cycle conception rates.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're ready with some synergizer as part of our dairy beef performance program just to look at another markable that we can use at the end of our performance meeting before we start our SGL, just as an evolution from products like Changus and Profit Maker and all that sort of stuff.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: How much short gestation straws would you use?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And would you price those calves differently knowing that they're a premature calves?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: So our SGL size, it's SGL dairy only, and we use that knowing we are producing a bobby calf.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: So when we think about that last 20%, the most important parts are to get a easy carbon for our heifer.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: The second one is to make sure our tar and matings, mating in 11 and 12 weeks, are carving in 9 and 10.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the third one is the inaccuracy of sex semen, where we're getting 10% of these cars that are coming through as bulls.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: The other one where we get a little bit of bobby is when we have a really high-quality cow that doesn't meet our criteria of having two cycles prior to mating.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so she's not eligible for sex semen, but she's a good cow, she's not overly big.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: We often use forward pack on her, and that will give us a 50% chance of producing a bobby calf as well.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's all about trying to figure out you're poking in these little parts of your system to try and minimize the risk.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why it's not a blanket 100% of our calves can be beef on dairy or value added, because we just can't do that with current technology, given our herd and what our requirements are for mating.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: And needing to make sure that you are protecting productivity and welfare at the same time.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and our primary purpose, remember, is we want to have a high-quality herd that is the most efficient converter of feed.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's our primary focus.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Let's not get clouded by all this beef on dairy stuff.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is just a part of once we get that part right, we can start to look at how we add value to those cows along the journey.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: Annie, sense that you have feelings about SGL.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a very unpopular opinion, Jack.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: But if you know me, you know I'm not afraid to share it.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know it has its place.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: I really do.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a dairy farmer, so obviously I'm not out there doing a 12-week or a 14-week carving spread.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Good lord, I know there's some long ones out there.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I see where it comes in.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: If we're talking short gestation hero fiddle, when I got at the sales in the Waikedo in mid-July, those hero fids that I buy, I'm gonna struggle to rear them more so than the dairy farmer would struggle to rear them.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: If I do manage to rear that calf, I'll probably get it to about 500 kilos and it'll just stop growing.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't really tell it's a short gestation calf just by looking at it in the sales.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the farmer can keep it for two or three weeks, pump it up a bit, give it a good looking frame, and I'll snatch it up thinking, oh, yep, that's gonna be a nice beast calf.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I'd be better off to buy the little crossbread or the Frisian standing next to it.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: As far as, you know, feed conversion from grass to meat, they just have not been bred to do that.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: They've been bred to pop out earlier to give the farmer those days in milk.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Such a good point to Annie, because you know, you can think about all the little incremental gains you can do with gestation length.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: And to be fair, when we're choosing our beef breeds now, our average gestation length on our dairy head is 280 days because the high BW tends to be shorter gestation.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Our beef products are normally sitting around that 278 to maybe just over 280, 282 max.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: So what we kind of try and say is we don't want to compromise on gestation length, but when it comes to generally trying to shift a cow forward, we want to make sure that that product is not entering into the supply chain.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's definitely a dairy product, gives us the best gain, and it makes sure that that calf is not mistakenly taken for a value-added product.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I understand your point about Hereford because that was why it has been so popular, because it gives you the saleable calf and the gestation length gain for the farmer, but it's quite hard to have that information transfer through with the calf as to its genetic background, I guess.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: A good reason for farmers like you, Annie, beef farmers like you, to start, you know, sourcing directly from dairy farmers wherever you can, so you can have some confidence about what that calf is that you're buying.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's just that traceability thing that, you know, at the sales, you just don't know what you're buying.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: All you have is your eyeballs, and there's only so much you can tell by sight.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Having that one-on-one relationship with your farmer, you really can flesh out a good bull or a a handful of bulls that suit both of you.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: And with the EBVs all recorded on the Dairy Beef progeny test, I want to assure everyone that they can have their cake and eat it too.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there are some incredible, incredible bulls out there, and they've got a couple days knocked off the gestation, they've got a low birth weight of 35 kilos, and then their carcass weight EBVs and Yale just go, you know, out the gate through the room.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very desirable bill for both of us to have a piece of the pie.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I fully support that too, Addie, because I think we've got to the point now where we've got enough information for farmers to make informed decisions, but also conscious trade-offs if that's what they want to do.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, marking is really important at a certain time when I'm doing sex semen.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: The trade-off may be on the price of it or something like that.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: But um, it's also about ensuring I've got a product that will grow well for my buyer in the end.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: My biggest challenge is really how do we transfer that data?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like when you're, unless you're having that private cell where they can see and understand what semen's been used and who the sire is, it's really hard to transfer that information, like that little calf passport, early cluster management, who's the sire, what are the genetics of the dam?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because even within our herd, you know, we're a F9 crossbed herd, but there's a huge contribution that the dams would make to the lifetime productivity of that calf.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think we've touched the surface of the cow's capacity to add value to that.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's still a lot that we need to understand in that space.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think actually you can't take away from the cow that dairy cows are bred to be the most efficient cow at putting grass into milk, right?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that conversion is also the same in dairy beef.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're talking about freezing or crossbred bulls, their efficiency of converting grass to beef is incredible.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Same as the beef bulls, if not better.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Which is why we've been farming them for so long and why we can farm them so intensely because they're just bred to make grass into meat.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Now, Joe, you're currently doing the Kellogg Rural Leadership Program, and not surprisingly, people will hear the passion in your voice about this.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: You've chosen beef on dairy as your focus.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: Can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing there?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, it's no surprise because I think back in 2050, Alan Cook was looking at, he was a Kellogg and one of the Kellogg cohorts, was looking at the opportunity that exists by adding value to these bobby cows.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: So you think we're 11 years down the track, how much we have moved in the space.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, like all the people who have come before me, there's kind of small elements of the supply chain that we're starting to tweak out and iron out and look for the opportunities.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, my point of focus really has been about some of these frustrations we've had around setting the price.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: And when we've kind of talked to a lot of people about the price setting process, there's a really varied and wide approach to how we do it.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Some people have a very low level of comfort about the risk and reward and how it's been shared.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so my project's really about understanding what are the mechanisms that will help us set the price that is sustainable for both the dairy farmer and encourages really good behaviour around size selection and early colostrum management.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: How do we then make sure that we're not putting undue risk on our car fares and that the price that they are paying is closely linked to the value at the end?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing at the moment prices are really, really high.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, lots of people say to me, Oh, we sell our calves too cheap.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of work on a$35 to$55 cost of getting the calf through the sale yard, and then we have a loyalty fee on top of that.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then we also look at the previous year's actual true sale prices for a four-week period across male and female across all class types, and then we kind of factor in an inflation-adjusted price each year.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: So we kind of have a point of data that we negotiate around, and then I talk to my buyers about what it's going to cost to rear this year.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was really keen to figure out what other people are doing and just see is there some space in this market to add value, give people more information so that we can have good, sustainable relationships so that people don't get burnt and we find ourselves with all these beef on dairy calves and we have no buyers, because that's not a place we want to find ourselves in.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: You're not the only catalogue cohort participant in this round that's doing something to do with dairy beef, right?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so Jeremy Lee is also looking at this, but he's looking at from the aspect of the calf health and the outcomes around parasite control and management.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's really cool to see that there's all these different components about how the chain can be successful for everyone involved and all the questions that we need to ask in order to realise some of the opportunities that are still ahead of us.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's still an emerging chain because it covers so many different people in the industry, and you've got so many influences from technology at the dairy farmer level right through to some of the volatility and the meat market, and then all this changing in systems and how you feed your cows and you know, techno-grazing and halter on beef farms and all that sort of stuff is revolutionising the way people can run these stock.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we need to make sure the right genetics are going into them so that our beef finishers can be as productive and efficient as they can possibly be.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, let's wrap it up.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: I've got one last question for each of you.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: If a dairy farmer wants to improve the outcome for their dairy beef or beef on dairy calves, I've only recently learned about the difference between those two terms.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um embarrassingly, in public.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so if a farmer wants to improve the outcome for their dairy beef calves, where should they begin?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: When I thought about this question, Jack, I think the one thing that really struck me is that the beef offerings are changing faster than the market feedback loop at the moment.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I know we've been through a bit of a disruptive time where we've got the dairy beef progeny testing coming through and we've had a lot of offerings on the market, which has been really, really healthy.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: But what I'm kind of finding now is that we've got more products to choose from, but we're changing these products before we've got the full feedback loop about where the value is being captured.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so to me, that's probably one thing we need to be very clear and think about is that it is a long game and that we just have to be very clear and purposeful about our choice and how we are tracking the value that we're adding along the journey.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've been very lucky with the community that we have up here.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's been very easy to step into that door.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: I would say honestly, just door knocking on your local dairy farms, if you see they've got a crossbred herd and you might see the trucks going that way to the sales, and you're going to the sales, and the trucks going back that way, and they're passing each other.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you could go, hey, we could take out a middleman here.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Having that conversation about genetics, colostrum vaccines, the age, you know, I was talking with a farmer today and he said it cost him about five dollars a day to keep feeding that calf milk, you know, from the vet.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I would more than happily pay that five dollars a day for him to hold that calf for me until it was 10, 14 days old.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's got huge value to me.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: The genetics, having that honesty, if I'm not the A-B tech, for them to be able to say, this is the bull that that calf was signed by.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: There was a bit of a um funny story.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe two years ago, Kakahoo Jerry was just absolutely booming.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone wanted his babies.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sherolet was flavor of the month.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so every Sherolet bull that you saw, you assumed it was signed by Kakahoo Jerry, and everyone was paying ridiculous money, four or five hundred dollars for these calves, and they were not signed by Kakahoo Jerry, they are by some unproven bull.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they could have been signed by a tail bill for, you know, but you just don't know until you have that conversation, get that trust in the relationship between yourself and the dairy farmer, and don't back out once you say you're going to buy the farmer's calves and they've put effort into altering their mating plans for you, just buy the calves.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: Clearly, we could carry on for much longer than we have time for today.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you both so much.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: What's come through really clearly is that getting dairy beef right isn't simple.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: Farmers like you who are making it work have usually had to figure a lot of it out through trial and error, through conversations with people on the other side of the chain, and sometimes through a season that didn't go quite the way you had hoped.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, for Joe and Annie, one of their strengths and focuses is relationship building that came through really strong.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: Not just finding a buyer, but finding the right one and building something that works for both of you over time.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that starts with a conversation ideally before mating.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: So if today has you thinking about your own non-replacement calves and what you could do differently, there is a link in the show notes to find out more.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Or you can go to the DairyNZ website and put dairy beef into the search bar.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: You'll find information about the Dairy Beef Opportunities Program, guidance for integrating beef on dairy into your business, and case studies of businesses like our farm and Temata Station who have done just that.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: Matewa.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: If you'd like to get connected with DairyNZ's latest advice, research, tools, and resources, whether it's reading, scrolling, listening, or in person, you can visit dairynz.co.nz forward slash get connected, and don't forget to hit follow to keep up to date with our latest episodes.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: As always, if you have any feedback on this podcast or have some ideas for future topics or guests, please email us at talkingdairy at dairynz.co.nz.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on Talking Dairy.