Academy of Dairy Veterinary Consultants spring meeting in notes

by Joseph Dalton

Genomics Discussion

• At the meeting to learn more
• Bulls to Stud
  • Test all females
• Test all heifers
  • OPU IVF top 10%
  • Embryos in low 40-50%
  • Conv. In other animals sexed acll
  • Not sure what next stop is
  • Increase $$ in herd
  • Vet as manager/advisor
• Hersey Dairy
  • Sexed semen  Heifers – custom fed
  • Feed the best (not all)
  • Super = ET
  • Early adopters  Know what to do
  • Sell additional heifers
• Poor motivation  Poor results potentially
  • o Don’t use sexed semen yet
  • Use other techniques first
• Sexed Semen
  • o Lots of heifers born
  • Don’t feed them all – But how to decide which to keep?
  • Identify bottom ends?
• Hardest part – How to select heifers?
• Develop lots of heifers with sexed semen – then cut bottom out
• Use sexed semen to eliminate jersey calf >0% to SS, 30% to Beef
• Tech service from Zoetis
  • Genetic profile
  • Code / Semen buy info strategy sexed, conventional, beef.
  • Zoetis better service; Neogen cheaper services but not as good as Zoetis
• DVM’s not bringing this up with clients; Clients are early adopters
• DVM @ MTG who has used sexed semen for years.
  • Excess heifers
  • Excellent health records
  • Sells animals to other producers; willing to sell at 1st strike or 2nd strike; potentially due to recurrent health events
  • o How to build a decision tree?
• Diagnostic opportunity when $NM comes back as – 8 $NM
• Do heifers from bottom % make good recips?
• Neogen dairy DASH BOARD – went live Oct 1st
• 5 or 6 participating DVM’s bring up genomics with clients
• Milk price is low – Barrier
• Expand? – Barrier
• Value of semen again
• OPU 7 month old heifers – IVF – ET
  • Raise them, sell bottom %
  • Embryo Prod
• $110 in vivo cost
• $60-70 IVF cost
  • Very selective on sires
  • Early adopter of technology  very high genetics  What are we going to do with these animals?