Lauren Kimble: Can you describe the typical dairy demographic in your area? How big are the herds and what breeds are they primarily milking? Are they familiar with beef on dairy breeding strategies?
Melanie Herman: Dairies in Florida are large. Almost all my producers are milking more than 1,000 cows, but several are over 3,000. All are primarily Holstein. Most of the herds have been utilizing beef on dairy genetics for years, mostly on their lower merit and less-fertile cows. About five years ago, we started seeing competition in the area. By working with local calf buyers to build confidence in the consistency and quality of the TD Beef program, it gave our customers a clear marketing outlet for elite ProfitSOURCE TD Beef day-old calves through an established supply chain.
Lauren: Your customers are operating in an environment with extreme heat. How do you leverage ProfitSOURCE when it comes to fertility?
Melanie: Fertility is an area where we can provide assurance by using ProfitSOURCE sires. Every month I look at fertility evaluations of ProfitSOURCE sires, based on real on-farm performance, to ensure the sires will perform for my customers. While calving ease is always important, in our Florida environment, fertility is everything. I also monitor the sire conception rates on each farm and consider how individual sires settle differently on separate farms.
Lauren: Are there specific strategies that herds can adopt to achieve greater pregnancy rates?
Melanie: Definitely! We often see a high-fertility sire and we want to use him and only him in our herds, but that can be a recipe for disappointment. Sire fertility isn’t the only factor in a pregnancy, there’s a lot at play, including: cow nutrition, compliance, herd health, season and much more. I recommend using a variety of individual sires and heterospermic packs. Research using heterospermic mixtures of semen from several different sires shows that it can be an effective safeguard against the variation in conception that sometimes occurs when using individual sires. Select Sires’ ProfitSOURCE pack is a mixture of three or more beef sires selected for outstanding semen quality and fertility potential. I work with customers to find the right combination of individual sires and mixed packs that aligns with their goals.
Lauren: How do you leverage Select Sires’ inventory calculators to optimize beef usage while ensuring producers are raising the right number of replacements to achieve their herd size goals?
Melanie: To ensure we’re staying on track with replacement numbers, I run the Optimal Genetic Pathways (OGP) calculator at least twice a year for most of my herds. Since most of my customers’ replacements are raised outside of Florida, it only makes financial sense to not raise more heifers than they need. I also like that I can easily use the inventory calculator to show producers the additional profits they can garner using beef on dairy over the profits lost on Holstein bull calves.