Keeping the faith in crossbreeding

LIC, the New Zealand-based animal genetics company hosted an open day last week on the Breen family farm in Emly, Co Tipperary. Simon Breen and his wife Carol, together with Simon’s parents Peter and Sheila are milking 260 cows on a 115ha farm.

While the farm was looking exceptionally well on the day of the walk, Simon is quick to say that it is a difficult farm that throws up plenty of challenges during wet weather.

The farm is currently well behind target in terms of grass growth, but with an average farm cover of 690kg/ha and growth over 50kg/day, it’s fair to say that the heavier type soils in west Tipperary are growing a lot more than the drier soils further east.

About 300 farmers attended the event to learn more about the herd and the breeding policy adopted by the Breens. Simon started by explaining that he wants the right cow for the system which is very much grass based.

“I want to get as much grass into the cows as possible. We’ll feed as much meal as is required but as little as is necessary. Last year we fed 540kg of meal per cow. So far this year we have fed 660kg of meal per cow so it’s likely to be over 900kg/cow before the year is out,” he says.

Access to grass

Lots of on/off grazing is carried out during periods of wet weather to ensure that cows get access to grass. Grazing infrastructure is excellent and the yard is centrally located but Simon says it’s still not easy, saying a prolonged period of on/off grazing is tough on man and beast so a robust cow is essential.

The average live weight of the herd is 487kg, with the third lactation cows weighing an average of 492kg and the fourth lactation plus cows weighing an average of 526kg. Last year the herd delivered 449kg MS/cow to the co-op, down from 503kg MS/cow in 2022.

At 2022 performance, the herd delivered 1.04kg MS per kilo of mature liveweight, a key efficiency metric according to David Power from LIC.

He says that smaller cows producing high levels of milk solids are more efficient because their maintenance requirements are less, meaning more of the feed they consume goes for production and less for maintenance.

Health issues

While milk solids production in 2023 was well below 500kg MS at 449kg MS and is likely to be similar this year, Simon says that bad weather and severe animal health issues in spring 2023 and summer 2024 also had an impact on performance.

Farm vet Marie Louise Ryan said an outbreak of pastuerella pneumonia, which was diagnosed in the herd is very unusual in dairy cows and more commonly seen in beef weanlings. The cause of the outbreak is not known but over 50 cows were treated for the disease.

The decision was made not to vaccinate in spring 2023 as the herd recovered but after a repeat of the disease at the end of last May, Simon decided it was better to vaccinate. The symptoms are sick cows with high temperatures and pneumonia. No animals were lost but the cost of treatment was high and the cost of vaccination is high also.

Simon says that he thinks the disease did affect this year’s breeding season, with some of the affected cows losing embryos.

Fertility

Despite the disease outbreak, fertility performance on the farm is excellent. Back in spring, the six-week calving rate was 95% and the three-week submission rate was 97%. After 10 weeks of breeding with all AI, the cows were scanned at 10% empty. There are 61 first calvers in the herd this year, which is a 23% replacement rate, which is higher than normal.

However, the high six-week calving rate is not a once-off, as the figure was 93% for 2022 and 2023 and 87% before that.

These are impressive figures for a herd that is not expanding. Many farmers would have achieved the target 90% six-week calving rate when a lot of heifers entered the herd for the first time, only for the figure to drop over time. Nationally, the top 10% of farmers achieve a six-week calving rate in the mid-80% mark.

A couple of areas were identified as reasons for the good figure on the Breen farm. Firstly, Simon says that you have to know when to stop breeding, saying he now only breeds for 10 weeks as opposed to 12, but he says that this only works if the cows coming into the herd have good genetics for fertility.

Other steps are to put any late-calving cow on once-a-day milking until she is bred. He also gets the vet in to body condition score cows on 1 April and any thin cow is then put on once a day milking until she is bred.

The EBI of the herd is €238, with €81 for milk sub-index and €95 for fertility with a maintenance of €33. In terms of milk, the herd stats are +0.3% fat and +0.18% protein with the 2024 calves at 0.4% fat and 0.21% protein. The kilos of milk figure for the herd is -69kg and it’s -140kg in this year’s calves.

“I’m not worried about the milk figure because if you have good fertility with a high six-week calving rate you will get the days in milk so that’s not a concern,” Simon says.

Crossbreeding

The Breens first went crossbreeding in 2012 and when the first crossbred heifers were due to be bred again they decided to put these back in calf to Kiwi Cross bulls and this policy has remained the same ever since with only crossbred dairy bulls being used to generate replacements.

Simon acknowledges that the herd won’t break any records in terms of EBI and says that on his co-op performance report he only gets a one star for the EBI of the bull team, putting him in the bottom 14% within the co-op for picking bulls on EBI.

However, the cow herd EBI gets five stars which he says vindicates the bull selection.

The EBI of the 2024 bull team is €213, which is actually lower than the herd EBI. When looking through the figures, the main reason why the bull team is lower is due to the fertility sub-index, which at €60 for the bulls is over €20 lower than the cow EBI. David Power says that the New Zealand figures for milk transfer well on EBI, but that the New Zealand figures for fertility don’t transfer as well to EBI.

Breeding Worth

On the Breen herd, bulls are picked based on Breeding Worth (BW) which is the New Zealand equivalent of EBI. Simon says a provisional list of bulls is made in October and this is further refined in spring based on the latest information available.

Fertility and fat and protein per cent is a key consideration. David says that the BW figure for fertility should be greater than 3%, with Simon’s bull team for 2024 averaging 4.9% for fertility.

When the bulls are picked they are put into the ICBF sire advice programme and this assigns them to cows and prevents any in-breeding issues.

For many farmers that have been crossbreeding, the calf quality issue has persuaded them to go back to Holstein Friesian and provisional figures from ICBF would suggest that the percentage share of Jersey genetics being used in Ireland is the lowest in years.

Simon has been using 100% sexed semen across the herd for the last three years with good success.

This year the conception rate with sexed semen on the cows was 63%, but says it is usually over 70% as the cows are cherry-picked for it. Just 60 of the 260 cows were bred to sexed semen dairy AI with all other cows getting served with Belgian Blue AI.

Heifers are served with sexed semen using fixed-time AI. After being served, the heifers are run with bulls but the bulls are removed and scratch cards are applied to pick up repeats between days 18 and 24. These heifers are served with Aberdeen Angus AI and then the bulls are released for the rest of the season.

The result is that of the 260 calvings each year, only about 15 are dairy-bred bull calves with the rest dairy heifers or Belgian Blue calves which are sold to a shipper at three to five weeks of age. The Breens built a new calf shed three years ago to enable them to hold on to calves for longer.

Happy customer

“The man who buys my calves is very happy with them. He says the people in Spain who buy the calves off him like Belgian Blue calves.

I have very little calving difficulties and have used bulls on mature cows with a calving difficulty of up to 10% without issues. Some of the CBVs [Commercial Beef Value] go as high as €128 so they are good calves despite being from crossbred cows,” he says.

When asked what he will do if the live export of unweaned calves ends, Simon says he is prepared to rear the calves to weaning age and then sell them to export, saying that he would lose too much by changing cow type just to make his calves more attractive to Irish buyers.