US Dairy Farmers: Strength in Genes

April 5th, 2017

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Category: Dairy, Miscellaneous

dairy-356x200(The Weekly Times) – STRONG prices for F1 calves are funding genomic testing for some US dairy farmers.

Neogen dairy product manager Laurel Mastro said US dairy farmers were using genomic testing to identify the poorest performers in their herds, then joining them to beef bulls.

“Selling these calves, and getting a good price, pays for the genetic testing,” Ms Mastro said at a Total Livestock Genetics forum in Kyabram.

Neogen dairy product manager Laurel Mastro.

Neogen is the world’s largest agriculture genomics laboratory and Ms Mastro spoke about a new Neogen product called Igenity, a genomic test that shows a heifer’s potential for key traits.

She said farmers were using genomic information by taking top heifers and joining them to sexed semen “to get the best heifers out of the best heifers”.

The poorest performers were joined to beef bulls, then the next lowest group were joined to conventional semen.

The top two groups were joined to sexed semen or underwent embryo transfer.

Ms Mastro said the herd was not always ranked on production.

“It can be whatever traits the farmer wants,” she said.

Ms Mastro said with the information, farmers could make better breeding decisions.

“If there’s a heifer with an undesirable breeding trait, then they can avoid selecting a sire with the same problem,” she said.

She said farmers were advised to test their herds when they were young as results could be procured from a calf as young as 15 days old.

Ms Mastro said when farmers started genomic testing, they usually found there were 15 to 20 per cent parentage inaccuracies.

“It might be that there are two calves in the pen and they’re not sure which one belongs to which dam,” Ms Mastro said.

“There can be errors during insemination.

“When people first get their results back they say: ‘How can there be errors? My AI guy is good.’”

Ms Mastro said in her experience the uptake of genomic testing was not linked to milk price.

“Once people start genomic testing then they do not want to let it go,” she said.

“In the United States, we are seeing processors getting more involved in it, such as yoghurt processors wanting their producers to do it,” Ms Mastro said.

 

 

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