With sustainability in farming being a major issue, I am interested in the industry's thoughts on breeds of cattle suitable for both dairy and beef systems.  I am aware that there will always be "pure" beef cattle (Lim, Blue, etc) as it is not possible to balance requirements for milk and beef without them, and that some dairy farmers will see the yield benefits of a "pure" dairy cow (Holstein, Brown Swiss, Ayrshire, etc) as a compensation for worthless bull calves, but I was just wondering what breed could make a decent compromise.

Locally, we ourselves are British Friesian, and do find that although they give less milk, it is often higher protein and fat than average, and feel that bull calves at £120+ does help cope with the reduced yields.  I am aware of a farm that is using the Montbelliarde breed, which is supposed to be a dual purpose breed.

I have heard other farmers claim that an MRI is a good dual purpose animal, but my knowledge of this breed is minimal.  I also read an article about Fleckvieh cattle (think they were simmental's that gave a lot of milk).

 Crossbreeding could be a possible solution, but it does appear that crossing a jersey with a blue still produces a near worthless calf.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts

Dan

 dual purpose animals tend to be average at both and as such arent much use for anything. however there is definitely a place for using crossbreeds in order to produce quality suckler cows. and less extreme holsteins or british friesians can be succesfully reared as bull beef, the friesian more so as they tend to have better conformation.

in my opinion, having just based my dissertation sort of on this, using the less extreme holstein genetics and crossbreeding with a high conformation beef breed, will produce the best suckler cow. from a dairy point of view i would think that crossbreeding would be a logical option, especially if you are looking for longevity, using something like an MRI and crossing it with a higher yielding breed would up the yield whilst keeping some of the 'beefier' traits, like the smaller size etc.

Two guys I know are using long-leg dexters, which are dual purpose, to cross with angus. They've got enough milk for two calves each, and because they're fairly small (but not tiny), they can both keep larger numbers both inside and out. The cows eat a fraction of what a normal cow eats and neither of these guys uses any feed for the cows and not a lot for the youngsters either. The youngsters are like angus just a bit smaller.

Farmer Dan 6465:

it does appear that crossing a jersey with a blue still produces a near worthless calf.

Dan

I used to rear up some Jersey cross Limousin bull calves.They looked scrawny, awful things until about nine months old, then it was as if someone had inflated them, they suddenly looked like Limi bulls with Jersey colours.

 Gulli, Your response has interested me, and in some senses i completely agree with you, crossbreeding does have a place in farming, especially in producing suckler cows, with most dairy breeds producing too much milk and lower quality calves, and the risk of purebred beef breeds not producing enough milk, resulting in a calf that doesn't do as well.  But your opening statement I am not so sure about, is it such a bad thing for a cow to be average in both milk production and beef production compared to good in one and bad in the other, more so in the dairy sector than beef.  Margins in all livestock farming are tight, and in dairying all extra milk output has to be fed for, so the higher yielding cow will be more expensive to keep per lactation requiring output to be higher to pay for this, whereas increasing calf value will be for a very minimal marginal cost for each calf - how much more expensive is it to keep a £200 calf for 2 weeks is it than keeping a £2 calf for 2 weeks.  So going on this theory would the lifetime profit of the dual purpose breed be reasonably comparable to the extreme type.

Commenting on longevity - was quite suprised to see the volume of 07 and 08 cattle in the barren ring today, we must be doing something wrong in terms of lifespan.

Kol, haven't heard of any farmers using Dexters around here, but do know one who is using Angus x Jersey heifers for similar reasons, seems logical to me.  With regard to rearing 2 calves, does this require hours and headaches with adoption of a purchased calf, or do they know something I don't about twins?

Bovril, I have used observations and market reports from the local calf ring to value calves, with the jersey x angus heifers usually making £10-12, Bulls £20-25, and Jersey x Blue Bulls typically £40ish.  I don't doubt that some of these could do well for beef, however many of them sadly don't make it.  The Angus x Jersey heifers were being shot until the farmer I know decided to try them as sucklers, even then he only paid £10 a piece, so hardly high value.  I have always viewed young calves as a better indicator of genetic value than stores or fat cattle due to there being far less human variables through their life, also they are the only ones I ever see sold as we don't do store cattle, which are sold on a different day to calves, so never see them in market, and fat cattle don't sell till late in the day, so I have always gone home.

We have some jersey crosses in the herd which are small and will not produce much of a beef calf or raise much cull value, good in grass based systems though. We also have some brown swiss crosses which i think are very smart they produce a good calf and and have a flatter lactation curve but can still milk well. We just calved one the other day that had done 9100 as heifer with a claving index of 380 days, planning to ai holstein heifers with sexed brown swiss and fresian this year to move back towards easier kept animals. Simi cross bs are nice calves.

I am not sure dual purpose animals have a place, simmentals and dexters ahve moved away from dairy towards beef and the shorthornseperated into two strains. Whilst other eg Gloucesters have all but disappeaed.

You talk about extra costs to keep high yielders but ina dairy herd the crippling costs are generally the fixed ones. i.e Cubicle spaces, parlour labour etc. these stay the same no matter what type of cow you breed. Many of the variable costs i.e water feed, slurry handling volume, lighting/electric are the same for high or low yielders. I would say that if you go down the low yield route you might as well go for it witha New Zealand type system rather than a half way house that ends up being medium input low output.

Cross breeding is popular at the moment with some MRI/Montbelliarde/Norweigan breeds being used. This tends to be in Holstein herds that have gone extreme and want to bring some vigour back in , with improved fertility etc. I dont think that calf price really comes into this agenda.

Farmer Dan 6465:

 Gulli, Your response has interested me, and in some senses i completely agree with you, crossbreeding does have a place in farming, especially in producing suckler cows, with most dairy breeds producing too much milk and lower quality calves, and the risk of purebred beef breeds not producing enough milk, resulting in a calf that doesn't do as well.  But your opening statement I am not so sure about, is it such a bad thing for a cow to be average in both milk production and beef production compared to good in one and bad in the other, more so in the dairy sector than beef.  Margins in all livestock farming are tight, and in dairying all extra milk output has to be fed for, so the higher yielding cow will be more expensive to keep per lactation requiring output to be higher to pay for this, whereas increasing calf value will be for a very minimal marginal cost for each calf - how much more expensive is it to keep a £200 calf for 2 weeks is it than keeping a £2 calf for 2 weeks.  So going on this theory would the lifetime profit of the dual purpose breed be reasonably comparable to the extreme type.

 

theres a place for dairy bred bull calves, intensive finishing of holsteins for instance and a british friesian would work better in this system. but dual purpose breeds dont really exist anymore, because you either endup with a half assed dairy cow or a half assed store animal. in my opinion its better to excel in one thing that be average at two things because it means you dont do either of them well.

Gulli, one of those subjects that needs re-visting. Out here in Transylvania we have a totally different resource availability. We have land and low labour costs but critically little capital availability in a situation where the building and machinery stock is highly depreciated. Local milk production averages 3,500 litres so a giant leap forward is 5,000 litres. In theory we have a local Simmental-type but free access to AI means that there is little breed integrity. The Montbelliarde is coming in, partly because it is a mountain breed and partly because it is reputed to utilise hay well. We plan to take a fresh look at dual-purpose genetics because the resources and management are often not here to invest in the more extreme dairy types. We also need to rebuild a beef industry but most people do not have the cashflow to run a beef only system, they need a good beef animal that can still produce milk for sale so as to preserve an income stream, important when you herd of cows is 5-10 in number. For us the problem is that the dairy systems in the west have become too extreme for here and there are few examples of anything else around. We need to find the alternatives and that will include at least an assessment of cattle breeds that have a dual-purpose capability. Any thoughts are therefore welcome.

As Cider Ted states, the Shorthorn split into two breeds, but both were slightly towards dual purpose in my young days. There were milking herds of Herefords into the 20th Century. I recall a YFC visit to Lord Ridley's dual purpose Red Polls (over 50 years ago!!) but I remember from information on their milk yields and seeing them in the flesh that they appeared to be a real dual purpose breed, and not a compromise or neither one nor t'other.

Stuart Meikle:

Gulli, one of those subjects that needs re-visting. Out here in Transylvania we have a totally different resource availability. We have land and low labour costs but critically little capital availability in a situation where the building and machinery stock is highly depreciated. Local milk production averages 3,500 litres so a giant leap forward is 5,000 litres. In theory we have a local Simmental-type but free access to AI means that there is little breed integrity. The Montbelliarde is coming in, partly because it is a mountain breed and partly because it is reputed to utilise hay well. We plan to take a fresh look at dual-purpose genetics because the resources and management are often not here to invest in the more extreme dairy types. We also need to rebuild a beef industry but most people do not have the cashflow to run a beef only system, they need a good beef animal that can still produce milk for sale so as to preserve an income stream, important when you herd of cows is 5-10 in number. For us the problem is that the dairy systems in the west have become too extreme for here and there are few examples of anything else around. We need to find the alternatives and that will include at least an assessment of cattle breeds that have a dual-purpose capability. Any thoughts are therefore welcome.

 

have you considered MRIs? not sure how easy it would be to get hold of them where you are. fairly beefy dairy cattle in my experience, and put to a beef bull would provide for the beef system.

other than that off the top of my head, you could always crossbreed, and basically milk suckler cows instead of leaving the calf on them, not sure what the yields would be like though

Gulli, actually doing some more research into the Red Poll. I might be slightly biased having been brought up in Suffolk, but the existance of some dairy herds in the UK is encouraging, I have eaten the beef and they are reputed to go well on a simpler forage diet. On the cross-breeding note, we would like to try and encourage people to do some pure-bred breeding. It is not rare to see any conformity in the stock here and there is little sign of controled breeding anymore. It is not really surprising when 80% plus of the national herd is in 1,2 and 3 head farms. The origins of these were stock from the old state farms, since when they have been crossed with whatever AI was available. Stuart

 Stuart Meikle, I have to side with you on wanting to see pure-bred breeding, we have always been a pure-bred herd and at the moment it looks like we always will be.  The Red Poll is an interesting one, up until recently I had never heard of it, but was told about a local farmer who had a herd back in the early 70's.  Subsequently it turns out that the herd had been bred to British Friesian for 35 years before being dispersed.  In the Late 90's we purchased a single British Friesian heifer calf from this farm.  She fits in well with our system, and I always thought she was purebred.  Although she is from many generations of British Friesian, I have come to the conclusion there is a small Red Poll influence - When crossed with our Hereford bull, she well produce a red calf, but 95% of our Hereford x are black.  Last year she produced a Polled British Friesian heifer calf (the bull is not polled - all the others have horns).  Although the influence is small I can see some of the characteristics in her, with a fairly small frame, but huge amounts of flesh on the frame, and a reasonable milk yield, on a par with our Friesians.

Like yourself, I am probably biased, but have you considered the British Friesian.  Reasonable milk yields, high constituents, long lasting, viable bull calves.

Our system is forage based, with a small amount of concentrate, and yields, while not spectacular at 5500-6000 litres pretty good.  The cows get back in calf well with conception rate at about 70%, and last a long time, with the average barren cow being 7 lactations, reducing the need for replacements, enabling a cross with a beef breed for animals to be finished for beef.  The purebred bull calves are obviously viable beef animals, as 98% of the bull calves sold in the last 2 years being reared - we sell at 2 weeks.  The barren cows require no further finishing, and are fit to kill straight out of the parlour, at 700kg + liveweight.

I may be simplifying this too much, but how I guess it could work with 3 cows.

 2 served to British Friesian - result 1 bull and 1 heifer calf.  1 served to beef bull - result 1 beef x calf.

Retain heifer as replacement for future barren cow, rear bull and beef x for meat.  Result - self sufficient and self contained 3 cow unit.

Dan

 

Stuart Meikle:

Gulli, actually doing some more research into the Red Poll. I might be slightly biased having been brought up in Suffolk, but the existance of some dairy herds in the UK is encouraging, I have eaten the beef and they are reputed to go well on a simpler forage diet. On the cross-breeding note, we would like to try and encourage people to do some pure-bred breeding. It is not rare to see any conformity in the stock here and there is little sign of controled breeding anymore. It is not really surprising when 80% plus of the national herd is in 1,2 and 3 head farms. The origins of these were stock from the old state farms, since when they have been crossed with whatever AI was available. Stuart

 

sorry for the late reply, first cut silage started and back to uni as well.

another thought i had was south devon cattle. but i guess availability might be an issue for you again. they are about the closest you can get to a dual purpose cow.

I would be interested to hear the results of your research and what you finally decide to do in the future. interesting to hear about the average herd size, what size are you looking at?

Phil

Dan i know i am going slightly of the subject here but how do you achieve such high conception rates of small amounts of cake and a forage based system?

 Honestly Roatary50, I don't know the reason why our conception rate is where it is, nor does my dad, the AI technician, the vet, or the cake rep.  All I can tell you is how our system works - we feed baled grass silage in front of feed barriers, 1 bale every 3 metres, and keep it pushed up until it is all gone, we feed an 18% high starch cake in the parlour, with ad-lib minerals and salt licks in the cubicle house.  In the summer, the silage is replaced with grass, with some buffer fed silage.  We wait 90 days after calving until first service, and use the national company beginning with G, we us one bull on the friesians, most hold to first service, they will get a second chance to AI - same bull, and if not in calf, the go and live with Charlie for a while, but this doesn't happen very often.  I rate the AI technician highly, he is quick, reliable, regular on time, does a good job, and is a thorougly nice chap, having said that, the conception rate from the relief's is the same, so they must do a good job as well.

At a fairly recent discussion group, heat detection aids were being discussed, and I was very surprised that we were the only farm not using any - granted, we had the smallest herd as well -, but our cows seem to come bulling well, and everyone on the farm - My dad, myself, and 1 part time worker - is told that if they see a cow bulling, drop what they are doing and identify the cow - sometimes a pain, especially if the same cow is bulling 20 times in a day, but has to be done.  If they are due for service, they will be AI'd the following morning, once only.

The only thing we can put it down to is genetics, we are a purebred British Friesian herd, and fertility has been considered for over 30 years now, so hopefully that is paying off.  The cows look, short, fat and black, and are a nightmare to body condition score - our vet put a fresh calver at 4.75BCS over the winter.  We were not entirely convinced, and presented him with a barren cow to prove the point, he admitted, if the fresh calver was 4.75, the barrener was at least 7(on a scale of 1-5).

Admittedly, average yield is approx 5800, but fat and protein is high, as is conception rate and submission rate, bull calves are valuable, heifers worth a small fortune, we get very little foot trouble - 3 feet over the winter, and the cows just look happy and healthy, which to us is worth a lot.

Hope you are well

Dan

 

Thanks for that interesting reply it sounds like an easy simple set up very similiar too ours only we self feed straight from the face and grab the top off daily into trailers,slightly more milk with us don't know if that would contribute to poorer fertility but our conception was around an average of 35% we too are milking british fresian 230 of them how many are you milking?Our cows were also slightly over condition being an average of 3 we too use but are considering going it alone this year?

Are you block calving, or all year round?

We only milk 80 currently, so it is easy to keep tabs on them when bulling, and calve them all year round, so there are only ever a few bulling at once.  With there being so few DIY is not an option for us (average technician does 6000 services a year, so he is much more experienced than any of us could ever be), being a closed herd means a bull is not an option for all cows (we don't want a Friesian bull - and probably couldn't afford an AI spec one anyway), so technician is what we are left with.  You have far more cows, so DIY could work for you.

What is your waiting period after calving, think that can have quite an effect on conception - ours is the longest in our discussion group, and conception was the highest.

I suppose our cows are quite extreme British Friesians, which may explain the lower yield (milk is considered when choosing a bull, but is by no means top priority), there are huge influences from very few herds (Catlane, Blackisle, Deangate, Claybury), current sire of choice is Patterton Promise, has been for 18 months now, and the calves look cracking so far, so long may it continue.

Dan

we are block calving,we start around 13th august and then we serve around the 4th november but because its slipped on the cows that are calving after we start serving are served at 42 days but interestingly the cows that calve after november hold alot better average days to conception is 66 the cows that calve from august to november days to conception was 130,but the difference is i think the cows that calve before november go out to grass after calving the cows calving after november have had silage before calving and then go on to silage in the winter ration in my eyes the problem is the autumn grass?We have used deangate quentin for the last 2 seasons they are cracking calves and grow well i have just calved 38 deangate tarquin heifers and they are a nice bunch and milk well they have averaged 22 litres in first lactation.It is always in short supplt though we ran out early last season and had to go to hereford semen a bit sooner than we would have liked

 Our vet said that serving at 42 days will use an egg produced in the dry period, so your dry cow management must be spot on.  We have found that some cows have decided to "milk off their backs" a bit over the winter, we think this was caused by poor quality silage (it was late last year, as we were still under snow for most of March, and the grass didn't grow).  As we use baled silage, we noticed some dips and troughs in conception rates, linked to different fields, mostly the later ones baled.  This was causing some sub-clinical Ketosis within the herd, but not all the time, was a nightmare to deal with.  Do you notice cows in NEB fresh after calving.  We can notice peaks and troughs as we are all year calving, but if you find you are in a trough when block calving, I suppose this would be more difficult.

We have about 20 heifers out of Deangate Osbert, they haven't calved yet, are being served as they get big enough, not used Tarquin or Quentin, but I do rate Deangate bulls highly.  We find that there is always some British Friesian semen available, but not always the bull you would have initially chosen.  Have you thought about running sweeper bulls rather than Hereford Semen?  Ours does a brilliant job with heifers, they usually calve on the first cycle, but we only introduce up to 8 at a time (not all bulling, just big enough).  Think my favourie bull we have used was Claybury Edmundo, we have several daughters in the herd between 4th and 6th lactaition, they are short, but solid, milk reasonably well, calve regularly, look about 2 years younger than they really are, and have fantastic personalities - real characters.

Hi Dan the problem with us seems to be the cows that calve before we introduce silage into the dry cow diet or cows that calve and go back to grass after calving,and again when we turned cows out to grass in the last week of march the cows that had semen in them then and after don't seem to have held as well either.As far as NEB goes we did a fertility profile and did notice that some of the cows before 30 days calved were border line but after 30 days calved we ticked all the boxes we took blood from 17 cows and only 3 were in negative energy we also tested 7 randomly from the 17 for trace elements and that also was fine.We have had 1 case of ketosis only had to wash out 6 cows out of 230 and 3 of them calved twins and retained their cleansing.We did see a trough in preg rates when the cows came in in early november so this year we have decided to bring them in by the 20th October and not serve until the 14th November which is 10 days later for us to see if they can get through the transition between grass and silage before we kick off?We have also sourced a highly successful AI technician in last few days so have decided to use him as well his success with the spring calvers in the area is outstanding and he also has some interesting views on NEB,semen handling,technique of actually handling the cow prior to serving her and when inside the cow so fingers crossed for next season!!!He believes that every cow is in NEB about 2/3 days prior actually coming into heat so he doesn't think that it has the effect on the ccow that the g company do but hey i won't pretend to be an expert there because problems with conception is a new thing to me as we are full TMR at home and the farm i worked on for 6 years before coming down here wre also full TMR.Where are you farming if you don't mind me asking?And how old are you?you obviously have a good knowledge of the milking cow have you recently done your degree or something you seem to be a wealth of information on most subjects which is rare on these type of sites.

We do use 3 hereford sweaper bulls for the last 7/8 weeks of service but AI as well on particulary busy days we ahd problems this winter with one though with the growth that they get between their claws its an unfortunate flaw in the breed.They also go in with the heifers for around 8 weeks before being introduced to the cows but are thinking about sexed semen this season to try and bulk up on replacements don't really know if thats a good idea or not what would your views on that be.

 Hi Rotary50, hope you get on well with the new technician.  We farm on the Mendips in Somerset, somewhere that I regard is Dairy country, there are dairy cattle everywhere.  Units range from 40 - 1700 cows, and I think the average herd is approx 220, but don't quote me on that.  I am 22, and have recently finished a degree, but nothing to do with farming.  I find that the best way to learn about farming is a mix of past experience (limited to me I know, but I have been very involved in our farm for 10 years now), speaking to other farmers (I will always chat to a neighbouring farmer over a gate, no matter how busy I am, they may have a little piece of gold that you can apply to your own situation), discussion groups and farm walks/sales (our vet runs some very good winter meetings), and reading (mostly magazines, but if it comes through the door, I usually read it).  I find that I have no interest in pigs, sheep or poultry, so ignore them, and am not a massive fan of the Holstein, so don't spend hours reading hundreds of bull proofs for an ever increasing genetic pool, our farm will not grow maize, and would struggle with most other crops, so I am left with a very small focus of grassland, cattle management, and British Friesian/Ayrshire breeding, enabling me to learn a lot about few subjects.  The farmers round here are the sort of people that are dying to tell anyone who will listen about how they run their farm.

Anyway, sexed semen.  I have not done a lot of research on this, as it has more or less been ruled out for us.  Initially, the main selling point was not having worthless bull calves, but we find our Friesian bull calves to be worth similar to a Hereford x heifer, put this with the higher semen cost and reduced conception rate, and the figures didn't stack up to us.  Also, the layout of the farm makes AI on heifers difficult, so they live with our bull. There was also an issue on bull choice, but I think they have solved that now, as most are available sexed.  Our AI technician once described sexed semen as "left hand down" and "meddled with", which didn't give me much confidence in it.  Although with replacements, a genuine British Friesian does seem to be like the proverbial rocking horse poo.

We find that certain groups of cows out of different bulls can be more difficult to get in calf.  We have some out of Lanugo Cel (don't know why we used him, but were told he was British Friesian at the time), they are really hard work to get in calf.  Thankfully they are first generation, so we are keeping them in with the bull, and trying to breed out the bloodlines.

I am quite similiar in the fact that i enjoy a good natter with anyone with a view or past experience to share with me,the guy that i work for now is 71 this year and he is a wealth of information i must say,i too have no interest in anything apart from cows i dettest tractor work and am locky in the fact i have none to do here apart from scrapping and my brothers are tractor mad at home if i ever have to go back home to work.I am looking for a discussion group to join have just heard about the grazing dragons so might have a look into them.We have holsteins at home so i am not really used to these british fresians yet but they are real grazing machines i must admit.

Rotary50 have you tried feeding megalac or ruminant green gold? We feed both in the first 100 days of lactation and feel it really helps mantain body condition and boost fertility.