The use of beef semen in dairy cows over the past three years has simply been amazing. A recent National Association of Animal Breeders (NAAB) report on semen usage indicated that nearly 7 million units of beef semen were used with dairy cows in 2020.

Heifer Livability: The new trait was released in December, but 99% of the attention went to the simultaneously released Feed Saved trait. Of course, we have been getting used to Cow Livability for a while, but it is still worthwhile to reflect on Heifer Livability for several reasons.

Price-taker mentality: Use whatever beef bull you need to get the cow pregnant with a black calf. If you don’t care about influencing your price for beef-on-dairy crossbred calves, the genetics you use don’t matter.

Describe your perfect cow. Maybe words like productive, healthy, fertile or efficient come to mind. Or, maybe your perfect cow can simply be described as profitable. While those are nice descriptors, it’ll take a more specific goal to really make progress toward your perfect herd.

There’s no question about it: Beef-on-dairy breeding is red-hot right now. Stud companies are not the only ones catering their beef inventories toward dairy customers.

Do you ever feel like the age of genomics has made dairy cattle breeding more complicated? Or perhaps more scientific? While genomics brought us accelerated progress, it has also introduced us to a range of terms previously used by scientists alone.

As milk prices continue to waver, dairy producers across the country are looking down different avenues for profit. One that seems to be growing in popularity is the practice of breeding the bottom end of a herd with beef semen and selling the crossbred calves at a higher market value.