With feed costs continuing to climb, dairy producers can’t afford to raise more heifers than they need. In fact, dialing in your herd inventory can provide an opportunity for an additional revenue stream in the future. Jesse Ayers, a dairy farmer from Ohio did just that. About five years ago the Ayers family, who milks 650 cows in Perrysville, Ohio, started experimenting with a beef on dairy strategy. What began as a way to get trouble cows bred has evolved to a strategic program to grow profit, save money and reduce heifer inventories.
How many is too many? The first step in managing heifer inventories is to understand how many replacements you need to maintain your inventory. Using cull rate and conception rate, Ayers works with his ABS rep to land on a number that suites their operation. He estimates their farm needs around 25 heifers born each month to be sustainable.
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What is your goal? The second step is to determine your herd management goals. What do you want your herd genetics to be? How fast do you want to get there? Answers to these questions will help determine the cows you want heifers from.
On Ayers’ dairy all heifers are genomic tested. From there, the highest-ranking heifers account for about 80% of sexed semen breedings on the farm. The other 20% of the heifers get beef semen. Part of the strategy at Ayers Farms is to also breed select cows to sexed semen. “Each week we have a certain number of sexed straws to breed cows with,” Ayers explains. “Right now, we use a ranking system to determine which of the cows in heat that week qualify for sexed semen.” Everything else gets bred to beef semen. On Ayers’ farm, the beef calves are fed for roughly one week and then sold to a private buyer or at a special crossbred sale at his local auction yard.
Monitor heifer development. The final step in managing heifer inventories is culling. Sometimes even the heifers that have the genetic potential to be great, aren’t. Develop a set of growth goals to ensure your heifers are on track.
While it took some persuading to get the whole family on board with reducing heifer inventories through beef semen, Ayers says the reduced expenses and increased profits from crossbred calves are compelling.
