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We are back on dairyxbeef genetics. This time we are with Andrew Swanson from Select Sires. We ask some questions about conventional beef semen, but really we are focusing on the Herdflex program today. Herdflex is a program from Select Sires that uses beef on beef embryos. Thank you for listening!
Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
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Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. We are talking about dairy beef genetics again. Got a different take, different guest. Andrew Swanson is with us today. He's from Select Sires. In addition to visiting extension.umn.edu, please check out Select Sires website at selectsires.com and the Minnesota-specific website at mnss.coop. Find us on Facebook as well. We're always posting, always trying to get you new information. You can find us @UMNDairy and @UMNBeef. That's all I had. Let's get into it.
Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. We are here today. We're back on genetics. We're talking about it again. We can't get away from it. We have another guest on to talk about genetics and we're talking about dairy, cross beef calves on dairies. Andrew Swanson is with us today from Select Sires. He's from Ivanhoe, Minnesota, which is in southwest Minnesota. Grew up on a cow-calf operation, beef operation, where he still farms with his parents. Andrews, just give us a quick rundown of what you do for Select and how Select can help people, specifically dairies, for today, and we'll get to beef next week.
Andrew: Sure. Well, thanks for having me on today. My name's Andrew Swanson. My title would be Beef Business Manager for Minnesota Select Sires. We're a co-op that covers the states of Minnesota and North Dakota. My primary job would be to work with beef producers, cow-calf enterprises, seed stock, and commercial, and work with customers on reproduction and synchronization projects, as well as support our independent rep team and team of account managers. To touch on your other question, Select Sires can help producers in a variety of ways, a big team approach here at Minnesota Select Sires. When it comes to helping beef or dairy customers, we've got various positions within the company, and we take a team approach to helping producers reach their goals.
Joe: Perfect. Well, good. Let's get away from the company side of things. We're going to go right into some questions and ask you some things, and especially you being a beef guy. The first question's going to make you uncomfortable for sure because we need to know--
Emily: It's the most important question too.
Joe: It is. We need to know your favorite dairy breed, even though you're a beef guy, you got to pick one. I know you've probably bred some dairy cows in your day. What's your favorite?
Andrew: I guess when I started with this company, I was a intern six or seven years ago. After that, I started breeding Holstein cows as a relief breeder. To answer that question, I'd probably say Holstein. A little experience with Holjoe's, but most of my experience would be with Holsteins. That'd be my pick.
Joe: That is unfortunate. Holsteins.
Emily: I wish our listeners could have seen the look on Joe's face when Andrew said Holstein. It was not a good look.
Bradley: Are we tied now? Are we tied?
Emily: No. What's the tally?
Joe: We're keeping track of this, Andrew. It's two for Jersey. I'll still say them first because that's Brad and I and then there's two for Holstein, one for Dutch belted, which is Emily. One for Normandy.
Emily: Who said Normandy?
Joe: Glenda.
Emily: Oh, that's right.
Joe: Yes, we are tied. Jerseys and Holsteins are leading the pack, and we'll see if anyone ever votes Dutch Belted, but we'll see.
Emily: I think Dutch Belted has a chance to make a big comeback.
Joe: Okay, we'll see. Back to what we're here to talk about today. How are you involved on the dairies right now? When you are going to dairies, are you just trying to figure out where they can use beef in any way possible, or what are people asking you to do?
Andrew: This time of the year, I'm all in on the beef on beef. It's breeding season for this time of the year. I will get this fall and into the winter. I'll be going on some different farms with sales reps, mostly probably to talk about our beef embryo program, so to talk about the differences between beef and dairy, and beef embryos. We'll probably get into that a little bit later in this discussion. That's probably going to be the main reason that I'm on a dairy farm.
Joe: I don't think we should wait really, to be honest. Let's just jump into it. Tell us about --
Emily: We're diving right in.
Joe: We're diving right in.
Andrew: That's right.
Emily: Let's do it.
Joe: Tell us about this embryo program that you guys have going.
Andrew: Awesome. You bet. It was about 18 months ago. We had leaders in our company in our conference room here, and we went around and we talked about the idea of selling beef embryos into dairies and what that could mean for our customers in terms of having a straight-bred beef calf versus a beef on dairy crossbred calf. We went around the room and just talked about that, and there's a lot of what ifs and is this possible? It's been a big project we've been working on here for the last year and a half. We set out to try to figure out if this could be a reality in commercial dairies.
Basically, what we did is the summer of 2019, we did a fertility trial. The first step is, are these cows going to get pregnant at a rate below at or above beef semen? We did that on five different farms owned by four different owners throughout the state, central Minnesota, and Southeast Minnesota. What we did is we trained two of our AI technicians that were really proficient in AI. We trained them to put in embryos. As we began this trial, we knew going into it that it was the first embryos that these two members of our team, it was going to be their first embryos they've ever put in.
We set out and we began to collect fertility data. We put in about 550 embryos June, July, August, and September of 2019. We were really happy with what we learned. A little bit of a surprise to a lot of us, but on average across the board, we had 6% better conception rate with our embryos side-by-side comparison at the same farms with beef semen and dairy cows. That was about 550 embryos compared to 1,200, 1,300 straws of beef semen at the same farms. Really surprised and really satisfied with the results.
Joe: Especially when you're talking June, July, August, September, hot months. We usually see there'd be a little bit of a conception bump with embryos. While we're on fertility and reproduction, my concern is always how many of those cows lose those embryos because, usually, your abortion rates are a little higher as well. Did you guys look at that?
Andrew: Yes, for sure. There'd be some old data that would suggest that this isn't feasible in this old data. Even 10 years ago, there's too many abortions. To that, I guess my response would be that this technology has really came a long ways since you'd see any published data from universities out on abortion rates with embryos. We do know there will be a percentage of abortions, but it's not like what you'd find from research 10 years ago.
Bradley: Well, the question I have about the embryos, I've been reading about the embryos and have thought about that myself, but why would a producer want to use an embryo program for their dairy cows versus just breeding the dairy cows to a beef bowl? What's in it for the producer to choose one method or the other?
Andrew: One of the main reasons that led us to push down this path of straight-bred beef embryos, we've seen the price of the crossbred beef on dairy calf. We've seen the price of that calf decline. That's been one of the main drivers in what's our why on why we're going to push this beef embryo program, supply and demand. More and more dairies are using beef semen. It's becoming very common in the industry to use a percentage of beef within your dairy herd. What we're trying to do is really create a value-added product for the dairy industry, but also for the cattle feeding industry.
If you compare what we're doing, it hasn't been done. There is no such thing as year-round beef on beef genetics all sired by the same bull. That doesn't exist right now. We just think of the possibilities that can be added in the feedlot sector of this industry of what we can create. Really, when we're working with dairyman, we're trying to create some of that value or capture some of that value and pass it along to our customers.
Joe: I really like that you guys are looking forward to farther down the chain. A lot of times, we're looking for pregnancies. We just want pregnancies and how we choose that bull or how we choose what semen is going into these dairy cows. There's not a lot of forethought in looking down further down the chain, so I really liked that you guys are doing that. My big concern is, it has to cost more. It costs more than conventional beef semen, and therefore, each pregnancy costs more. Walk me through that. How does it pencil out? How much more do I need to have that calf be worth to make it all worth it?
Andrew: When we plugged in cost-per-pregnancy numbers after our trial last summer, on these farms, the actual numbers were 40% conception on embryos and 34% conception on beef semen across the board, a 6% fertility advantage. When we plugged our numbers in, in terms of transfer costs, cost of embryo versus semen, and we put those numbers into their conception rates, we figured it was going to cost about $125 to make a pregnancy with embryos. Now, that's using our $55 retail price on our embryos.
We were able to secure that price as the exclusive distributor of these embryos from a company called SimVitro which is part of Simplot Animal Science. We had partnered to make these embryos and we are the exclusive distributors of the SimVitro embryos and we're calling the embryos HerdFlex embryos. That's our product. That's what our product is called. Yes, we are adding cost upfront but we think that for sure the value can be seen on the back end. Probably a common for beef on dairy cross calf to be worth $150 to $200 right now.
If you'd look at sale reports in the spring for baby calves, 90-pound calves or 120-pound calves, beef calves that people are going to buy at a sale barn and draft onto a cow, you're seeing $350 or $400 that have been this spring pretty easily. Trying to establish a value for these HerdFlex straight-bred beef embryo calves. We think that with the dairymen's management system, we think that helps our case to add value on these calves. The fact that they're vaccinated, and the calf health is a number one because they're doing it every single day of the year.
We think that is all things that really help the health and help our cause in trying to create value for these calves. We've got a lot of people interested in these calves as long as we can get a group size enough where it makes sense to feed a panic cattle. We had a producer here last week who had a three-month-old 250-pound HerdFlex calf, and he sold it for 240 a pound, which would be $600 a head for a two-and-a-half-month-old calf.
Joe: That's crazy.
Andrew: That's kind of the value we're looking to capture. The other thing, we're trying to challenge our customers that just because you've traditionally sold your calves within the first week of birth, you sold them as wet calves, maybe there's an opportunity that you can make some money to feed them just a little longer. If you could feed them to two or three or four or 500 pounds, there's probably money to be made.
Bradley: Here's a question about, we talked about calving ease, that's one of the big reasons some farms that I know are that are using beef genetics in their dairy herd and we do at our own university herd. We're using beef genetics on our dairy cows. One thing is calving ease, that's the big thing that they're talking about. Is there any difference in calving ease or calving problems with a dairy cow having a beef embryo or just breeding it straight to beef?
Andrew: No, I would not expect there to be any more calving problems with a straight-bred beef animal. If not the same, I would maybe expect less from a calving standpoint. We're using Angus for the most part. We can make these embryos with different breeds, but what we will have in inventory will be Angus sires, high terminal Angus sires crossed with commercial Angus breed type Angus cows.
Emily: Outside of calving ease, are there other traits you're really looking for in the bulls that are put into this embryo program or how are those selections made?
Andrew: The main criteria for HerdFlex sires when they're being selected, calving ease would be one of the main criteria, as well as the $B index, which is the Angus Association's terminal index. We're looking for a $B above 175 on that index, and then double-digit calving ease as well.
Bradley: You talked about breeds, we always turn to breeds when we go into this podcast and we talk about genetics. I don't think any of us can resist. You mentioned Angus, are the most exclusive ones people are using, or are there other ones, or really can a producer, if I wanted to make some Dutch Belted embryos could I do that?
Andrew: Yes.
Emily: Will they be Belted Galloways if they were beef?
Joe: True.
Andrew: Sure. If you want to make embryos on different breeds, we can do that for you. We need a little lead time to get the embryos made and back to you, of course. That's for sure something we could do.
Bradley: Well, the other question that comes along with that, we talked about-- I'm most familiar with the beef and dairy crosses, and there's a lot of difference in male calves versus the female calves. We are generating embryos so I assume that they can be male and female or are producers wanting those male animals more or how do you deal with that when calf raisers and feeders and all that don't really want the heifers from a beef animal?
Andrew: At this point, our HerdFlex embryos are not going to be sexed. You're going to have a chance of getting a bull calf or a heifer calf, that technology is available. It's going to add a somewhat substantial cost in order to sex our embryos for the producer, and I don't quite think at this point, with what I've been told the added cost will be, I don't quite think that it'll be as economically feasible for the producer. If it's going to add $50 or $75 or $100 per pregnancy, that's the margin that we're really looking to gain compared to the beef on dairy cross.
Joe: We've talked in the past, I'm Angus, you're an Angus guy, Angus is where it's at. Can you tell me what breed is best and why for when we pick a bull or pick a breed to use on a dairy?
Andrew: If I'm a dairyman, I don't know if I have an answer to that question. I would say that I'm going to use the breed of whatever is going to generate me the most income in terms of when my calves are born. If you're a dairyman that sells wet calves, what does your calf buyer wants? I think that's a good working relationship that needs to continue to grow and, "Hey, if I switched to this breed, would you pay me more for my calves, or what can I do different that I can create more value out of these calves?"
In terms of beef and dairy cross calves, there's different breeds that people use for different reasons. I think the number one reason should be what your calf is going to be worth. Now, we've got producers that the things that drive their decision, our customers, the traits that drive our producers' decisions would be fertility, calving ease, and cost. Those are the three things that really matter first to dairyman. I think as we go forward, I think there would be more value put on carcass traits as well. At this point, that's really what's driving the dairies' decision.
Joe: You're avoiding saying a breed, which is kind of the answer that Brad and Emily and I came to before was, we don't know if there's a right choice right now. Now, there was some discussion in a previous episode about choosing a bull and switching breeds so that you have multiple different breeds on one dairy. Should I just pick one breed and stick with it, or what should I do?
Andrew: I would try a couple of bulls. I'd be more bull specific than breed specific. I think we'd see more variation in fertility on bulls than actual breeds. I would try some bulls and find something that works and use that bull for as long as you possibly can. As long as your fertility is up, and your calf buyer is happy, I would continue to be consistent. If you learn along the way that there's something not working with that bull, then you can switch, but I think it's better to be consistently bad than to be inconsistent.
Joe: I think consistency is the key. I really do. The guy on the next step of the chain needs to know what he's getting and how he's going to use it and it has to stay uniform and consistent. I think we're all on the same page.
Andrew: When we talk about our HerdFlex embryo program that we've just launched, that's kind of the consistency, is kind of the basis of what we're making. The half-sibs available year-round, and they're straight beef. The commercial cow-calf industry, the feedlot industry, the dairy industry, no one has seen anything like that before. It's really cool what we're starting the path down with the commercialization of straight-bred beef embryos in the dairy industry.
Joe: Oh, I guess we should ask as part of all this, how available is this program? Is it something that you guys are off and running with, so you could offer it to a lot of dairies? Is there contingencies on how you're able to sign up dairy so they have to buy a certain volume, things like that?
Andrew: We launched it in a soft launch in March of this spring with big plans for a big event at the Dairy Expo in Sioux Falls. Of course, that was canceled, so we rolled back and now we're just hitting it hard again to really start communicating what we can do and how we can help our producers with straight-bred beef embryos. There's a lot of logistics involved working with embryos instead of semen, but they're all logistical things that can be solved. One of the main ones is who's going to put the embryos in. That's something that we can train someone on your farm to do. If you agree--?
Bradley: Really?
Andrew: Yes, for sure.
Joe: That's really cool.
Andrew: For sure. Either at a cost, or if you sign a contract to buy a certain amount of embryos, we'll come train you for nothing. We'll train multiple people on your farm to put the embryos in. We don't have a preference if we put the embryos in or you put the embryos in or if your vet puts them in, we don't have that preference. We just want to bring you the opportunity to put in these embryos at this price.
Emily: Brad, you should sign a contract so that we can get trained to put in embryos, please.
Bradley: Yes, I would love to figure out how to put embryos in. Definitely. You only have Angus embryos and I don't know, there's lots of other breeds out there besides just Angus.
Joe: Brad wants to see Hereford, he's dancing around it, but he wants some Hereford.
Emily: Yes, he really wants some Hereford embryos.
Andrew: We could find you some F1 borrow the embryos.
Bradley: Yes, those are wonderful animals. [crosstalk]
Joe: At least borrow the semen.
Emily: What would you say, if you are working with a dairy that's considering beef genetics, whether it's semen, whether it's embryos, what are the key things you would want them to be thinking about in making the right decision? It's more than just making the sales. It's about how is this going to work into your management strategies? What are some things you'd talk through with the dairy on?
Andrew: Yes, I think the main three things that people look at would be that the fertility is very important. It costs a lot of money to lose a point of fertility along the line. It makes a lot of money if you can gain a point of fertility along the line. Fertility is number one. Whatever, if you're using semen or if you're using embryos, you've got to get fertility to get your cow pregnant. Calving ease would be important as well. We don't want problems with dystocia.
It affects the cow, it affects the calf. It's a problem that can be avoided. Let's make a decision and just avoid it. Getting past that, I think it's good to look at carcass traits; ribeye, marbling. Let's look at something value-added that we can consistently use in our mating decisions that's going to add value down the line. In turn, that's going to really help our customers get more value for their calves if they continue to sell them as wet calves.
Emily: As far as deciding which cows you're going to use to breed to beef or put embryos in, is there any thoughts you have on that, or do you just leave that up to the producer to select which cows are going to do that?
Andrew: No, that's a huge strength within our Select Sire's team. OGPs, optimal genetic pathways. We have some people on our staff that absolutely specialize in this. It costs a lot of money to have a dairy heifer born on your farm and for you to raise that dairy heifer. It costs a lot more money than what that heifer is worth as a springer. You do not need to raise any more heifers than you absolutely need to. Finding the right amount of sex semen or conventional semen, however you're making your heifers, that's it. That's all you need to use. You don't need to make more heifers than you need to. We've got people on our team that can really plug in to their OGP into their program and help you decide how much or what percentage of your herds should be bred to beef.
Bradley: Sometimes it always doesn't work because I used a bunch of sex semen and beef, and now I've generated more heifers than I would have if I just used conventional semen.
Joe: [chuckles] Yes, you got to get that dialed in.
Bradley: We got a problem out in Moors. We're going to have way too many heifers now, and I didn't use enough. I used 35% beef and still going to generate 60 more heifers than what I need.
Andrew: Yes, you're going to have to crank that beef semen usage up.
Bradley: That's the real role. Just because it's a university herd doesn't mean that we experienced the same thing.
Joe: No, it definitely doesn't mean that it's optimal.
Bradley: That's right. What is the interest out there from dairy producers with using straight beef embryos? Are just a few of them thinking about it, or is it just a thought? Where are we going, and will it amount to anything?
Andrew: Good question. Initially, people think it's crazy. There's a lot of reasons to initially say no. A lot of preconceived notions. Embryos cost too much. It costs too much to put them in. I think these are all problems that we can solve. To be honest with you, I'm very pleasantly surprised. When we present this idea, people are interested. People want to know if this is something that they can implement into their herd. The holdup is we need to convince people what these calves are worth and really start to capture the value for what these calves are worth because there's a lot of value that is going to be added into the cattle feeding industry with this concept as it gets implemented and as it becomes more popular.
Earlier this week, Hoards Dairyman published an article about us about HerdFlex beef embryos. I think as more media outlets pick up on the story, it's going to create some interest. We have other Select Sires Co-ops other than Minnesota and North Dakota, other co-ops that have jumped on board and are going to begin distributing these embryos, training employees, training on-farm employees. Yes, I think there's a lot of buzz about it. I think we're really on the front end of a really big thing for the industry.
Joe: That's good to hear. I know there's plenty of interest on the feeder side.
Andrew: Well, and there's a lot of people from a feedlot sector that would love to buy these calves at 500 pounds. I've got a long list of people sitting on my desk. I don't have that long of a list of people that want to feed them as bottle calves.
Bradley: Exactly.
Andrew: There's probably an opportunity if you're interested, whoever's listening, if you want to feed baby calves and take them to 500 pounds, there's probably an opportunity where you could buy them and sell them and turn out all right on that deal.
Joe: I think we got plenty of tape. Let's wrap it there. Andrew will be back with us next week to talk beef genetics. Well, hopefully, he wants to come back after experiencing this today, but he'll be back with us next week to talk beef genetics. As always, if you have scathing rebuttals, questions, comments, send them to the moosroom@umn.edu.
Emily: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Joe: Perfect. Then please check us out at our website, extension.umn.edu. Thank you for listening. We'll catch you guys next week.
Emily: All right. Well, it appears Joe has left us again. Oh.
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