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We are talking about one of Brad's favorite topics today - crossbreeding. Joining us is a true expert, Amy Hazel Loeschke completed her PhD at UMN and currently works for ProCROSS. 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. You are not just here with the OG three. We have a guest today. First time in a while.
Emily: Finally.
Joe: It's because Bradley did some work. He's swamped up there in Morris, and because he has tenure, he's got so much going on, but he found a guest for us today. We're super excited to have Amy Hazel Loeschke today with us. She's from ProCROSS. Works for ProCROSS, has worked for them for a couple months. Got her PhD at the University of Minnesota with a big crossbreeding project that really changed the game. Amy, thank you for being here today. Give us a little rundown on who you are and where you're at now.
Amy Hazel Loeschke: Thanks, guys, it's great to be here with you. I grew up on a dairy farm in southeast Minnesota. My background's actually in registered Holsteins, and I really enjoyed all the youth programming stuff that I got to do coming along with that. Then I decided to go to the U of M for my undergraduate degree. My first exposure to crossbreeds was milking cows in the St. Paul Dairy Barn, and it was really neat.
I got to milk some Montb�liarde crosses. My first year there on campus, it immediately piqued my interest in what these crossbreeds could do. Quickly, I got to develop a relationship with Les Hansen and Brad. I actually have been fortunate, I don't know if fortunate is the best word, but I've been in Brad's footsteps for many, many years of my tenure.
Bradley: I don't know about that.
Amy: [chuckles] Masters and PhD at Minnesota. I've gotten to work on this tenure project with crossbreeding and gotten to intimately know a number of herds around Minnesota doing the research with us in partnership. Then the last two years I've moved on to other employment avenues since our research project came to a close. The ProCROSS company felt like a really awesome fit. I believe in the crossbreeding rotation and the results that we got, which I think are really enthusiastic for so many of the farmers. Been a really great opportunity for me to keep working in the same type of area.
Joe: All right. We promised you there's two very important questions that we need to ask you.
Emily: Super secret questions.
Joe: Super secret. The first one is, what is your favorite beef breed? If you have to pick one, what's your favorite beef breed?
Amy: I guess I'd have to go with Stabilizer because actually--
Bradley: What's that? That's like Gelbvieh crossbred something, isn't it?
Joe: That's a crossbred.
Amy: Yes. It's a composite breed, but it is actually a breed. It's its own breed. It's different from [crosstalk]
Bradley: We're going to need swag from the Gelbvieh association here now, my gosh.
[laughter]
Joe: What is it again? Sorry, tell me again.
Amy: The Stabilizers composite breed consisting mostly of Angus and Simmental lines, but it does have some South Devon and some Gelbvieh included as well. Of course, another shameless plug for my company, because Creative Genetics does sell Stabilizer beef semen. They're the breed with the largest database, the feed efficiency testing.
Emily: Are those mostly black then, the Stabilizers? What's their hide color?
Amy: They come both in black and in red bull colors. Because depending on the Angus influence in their background, there's some Red Angus incorporated as well.
Emily: Sure.
Joe: We better update the listeners on the list. Black Angus with three, Hereford with one, Chianina with one, Brahman with one, and Stabilizer with one. Now I need to ask the question.
Bradley: I was for sure you were going to say beef master because that's pretty good too.
Joe: Now I need to ask the question because I screwed this up and you probably won't hear it on the podcast on the take, breaking the fourth wall here, but I said Balancer when it said Stabilizer there, because I was wondering what the difference is between the two. I've never known a ton about all these different breeds. What's the difference between a Balancer and a Stabilizer?
Bradley: Balancer is Gelbvieh Angus only. Stabilizer has, what else, Amy, in there?
Amy: Mostly just Angus and Simmental, but it has influence also from Gelbvieh and South Devon.
Joe: Next question is your favorite dairy breed. I know we're talking crossbreeding today, but you got to pick one dairy breed. What is your favorite?
Amy: It can't be a crossbreed?
Joe: It cannot.
Emily: No.
Bradley: No. It has to be a pure breed.
Amy: I'm going to have to go with Montb�liarde on that one as well, because they're just such a great cross with Holstein and shameless plug part of ProCROSS as well.
Bradley: Actually we get swag for the shameless plugs, remember that?
Emily: Exactly. The more you say it, the more you do them, the more we get.
Bradley: Exactly.
[laughter]
Joe: That's another new breed on the dairy side. We don't have a whole lot of the same breeds here. Jersey leading with two, I guess Holstein is also up there with two. Dutch Belted with two. Normande with one, Brown Swiss with one, and then now Montb�liarde with one as well. Jersey's--
Emily: Who said Brown Swiss?
Bradley: Kirsten A grad student. Kirsten--
Emily: Oh, that's right. I wasn't invited to those episodes.
Joe: No, you were not.
Bradley: That's right.
Emily: Not invited. No. Thanks guys.
Joe: We've answered the important questions. We've got our favorite beef breed, our favorite dairy breed. Now we can start talking about crossbreeding. Let's go back to the study. The big study that you did at the University of Minnesota. Tell us, just give us a brief overview of what you guys were trying to accomplish because I know this thing was a long study.
Bradley: I could tell you how we got there.
Joe: Let's do it.
Bradley: Of course, Brad's always got to--
Emily: Yes. We have a guest on, but Brad's going to talk the whole time.
Amy: No, that's great. I got to give Brad credit though, because I've been around the university a long time as I alluded to, but really between Brad and Les's effort, they got this whole crossbreeding thing going. Brad's got the history and the longevity behind the system too. He gets some credit here. No doubt.
Bradley: Amy and I go back a long time. We spent many time in France and in Europe exploring these breeds. It started way back in, I don't even know, 2001 actually with a California study that were using Normande, Scandinavian Red, which was Swedish Red and Norwegian Red at the time, and Montb�liarde. That's part of my master's and PhD, that looked at production, fertility, longevity, and economics of those, and in a nutshell, found that crossbreeds were more profitable. The Scandinavian Red and Montb�liarde were more profitable on a daily basis than a Holstein.
Normande may not fit well for a confinement-type system. We did not use health information, we didn't have health information on those cows. That was the real reason why we started in Minnesota again, and to look at herds that we could work with in Minnesota that were willing to record health. That's how it all began. There was crossbreeds at Morris here in St. Paul that Amy and I worked on. Amy and I used to get kicked all the time by cows in the St. Paul Barn trying to collect blood and you name it.
Amy: A really fascinating and detailed system for body dimension measurements. Tony Sikora was in on that and built us a fancy set of tools that could take all obscure types of measurements. Don't get me wrong, linear scoring is great, but why linear score when you can build homemade measuring tools up your wood shelf?
Emily: You got the Sikora system now.
Bradley: Exactly. That's right. Anyways, tell us about this study, I guess. Sorry for my interruption, Emily.
Amy: The project that I got to work on was launched in 2008. We initially recruited 10 herds and we had 8 herds that completed with us the full 10 years. Towards the end of the study, we actually combined two herds together because they were owned jointly by the same herd owner. When you read our final papers, we'll talk about seven herds in total. Those herds enrolled a total of over 3,500 cows, foundation. Holsteins is what launched this whole study. The design of the study was we asked the herd owners to breed at least 150 of their pure Holstein foundation cows to both Montb�liarde and VikingRed to generate F1 crosses.
Then the balance of those other 100 Holsteins were bred to Holstein sire so that we would have a pure Holstein control. Now, many of these herds actually enrolled more than the minimum of 150 and 100. There was extra cows in both breed groups in a lot of cases. Then as the generations got rolling, the F1 crosses then were bred to the third breed. We had the rotation going in both directions.
At the same time, in all cases in every herd, each generation had a pure Holstein herd-made comparison group. We targeted herds that were on DHIA tests so we could get all of the production parameters and fertility traits. The other big trait groups that were emphasized were survival and then the health traits that Brad mentioned. Then of course we took all those things and combined them together to be able to look at total profit, which was the whole objective at the end of the day.
Joe: Was that lifetime total profit, not just first lactation or not just a few lactations, but lifetime total profit?
Amy: Correct. We looked at a lot of different traits on a lactational basis, but the objective was to look at profit in two different ways. We had lifetime profit measured from the time the cow first calved, first lactation until she left the herd. Then we just summed all of the incomes and expenses from every day of her life during that time period. Then we also broke it down to a profit per day in the herd. The reason that that was important is because a lot of dairy farmers don't have endless space for cows to just keep growing and expanding. The profit per day in the herd is really a better metric that you would look at if you have a finite stall number in your barn. You can think of it as more like a profit per stall per day in a way.
Joe: Did you include calf health and calf loss, and all these things that happen early in life? Was that accounted for?
Amy: We did not look at anything that happened prior to a first calving, except we did look at age at first calving as a trait. We balanced the replacement cost based on age at first calving, which of course then is influenced by heifer fertility. We did not include any other heifer traits, mostly because a lot of these herds had their heifers raised off site, and so we weren't real confident in the quality of heifer data that we had available to us.
Joe: The main finding was that crossbreeds were more profitable, right?
Amy: Exactly. That's what we found. When push came to shove on, the two breed crosses the Montb�liarde Holstein and VikingRed Holsteins combined were 47 cents more profitable per cow per day than their Holstein herd mates. Then when we went to the next generation of VikingRed-sired crosses out of the Montb�liarde Holstein dams, we added them together with Montb�liarde-sired crosses out of VikingRed Holstein dams. Those cows were 34 cents more profitable per day than Holstein herd mates.
Joe: It doesn't sound like much when you're talking about cents per day, but that adds up so fast. My goodness, 40 cents per head per day is a lot of money.
Amy: Definitely. Because when you think about some of the other types of management decisions we're making out in the field today, we have people making drastic changes to diets just to try to save 1 or 2 cents per cow per day. Here we're talking about a profit margin of 30 cents or more per cow per day. This could be a huge profit changer for dairymen who want to take this method of breeding into the herds.
Bradley: Even if you had a small herd, 100 cows or so, that's more than $10,000 a year in additional profit. If you have larger herds, 500 cows, 1,000 cows, it adds up really fast.
Amy: At 40 cents per head per day, I was just doing back-of-the-napkin math here, at 500 cows, that's $73,000 per year with that 40 cents per head per day. It's not a small amount of money.
Emily: It's a good chunk change.
Bradley: Girl's got to eat.
Emily: Girl's got to eat.
Joe: Girl's got to eat. Why do you think that people are not adopting crossbreeding as much as they are? Because when you see these numbers, it seems pretty clear. Why are people avoiding the adoption of it.
Amy: That's a good question. I think part of it is just it's a new thing and a little bit of fear of the unknown. Dairymen in the US are pretty traditional. We were all raised through 4-H programming and whatnot to only identify with six pure breeds of dairy cows. The big three being Holstein, Jersey, and Brown Swiss. We have a lot of background using Jersey for crossbreeding, and maybe to a lesser degree the Brown Swiss, at least in published studies.
I think they've been successful in the field in some cases, but not in others. People have tried it or seen other people tried in their herds with mixed reviews. Really the work that we've done at the U of M's been some of the first that has actually been able to assign solid profitability numbers to some of these other types of crosses. Our work on the ProCROSS rotation in the research is really probably foundational as far as what we would recommend producers start with when they want a crossbreed if they want these kind of profit margins.
I think part of it is, to get back to your question, is getting a little bit more education out there and showing people that you can achieve some of the same or better production parameters with a ProCROSS as you can with your Holstein. You can also experience better fertility less veterinary costs less replacement cost and all these things roll into your bottom line. Getting more exposure out there, I think, will be key. It is growing quickly, it's just that maybe we don't read about it every time we turn around in a trade magazine, so it doesn't seem like it's growing as fast as it really is.
Emily: One question that I have on that-- Bradley, you will let me talk.
Bradley: No, you go ahead.
Emily: One question I would have on that you were just talking about, Amy, how there's been mixed reviews on farms that have tried it or they're looking at their neighbor to see what they think. Something we talk a lot about related to any topic on this show is management and the influence management has on whether something on the dairy is successful or not. Did you find, just anecdotally, where these cows, you have to manage them differently because of temperament or size, or whatever else it may be? I'm just curious on that.
Amy: ProCROSS fits really well into most typical US herds. The study that we encounter or that we conducted actually, we targeted herds that were high-production herds. They had excellent management, great fertility numbers. The main reason why they wanted to join the study was because they were seeking a system that would reduce their labor cost. They wanted to improve profit, obviously, and they just wanted more ease of management and less sick cows in the hospital pen, was their goal.
They were encouraged by the California data and were looking for a system that they were hopeful could achieve that. All of these herds too had a keen interest in participating in an effort that had good designed balance to a study. They actually knew the data that they were contributing was going to be well-organized and well-designed so they would have good solid comparison groups.
Joe: There's a lot that goes into the increased value. I think it's really important to know that the herds in the study were already doing excellent management. We weren't changing a whole lot of other things to make this more successful. That's what I find most intriguing about a lot of this data, is that we didn't take a farm that was struggling, change a lot of things, help them, and then also introduce these crossbreeds. We took very good farms that were already doing very well and just wanted to do better. That, I think, is the biggest selling point for me on some of those crossbreeding stuff, is that we're seeing increased value over the top of herds that were already pretty good or excellent even.
Amy: To give you an idea, for example, when we ended the study in 2018, collectively the seven herds were just under 30,000 pounds of milk for a rolling herd average. One of them was a top award winner for a dairy cattle reproductive council award the same year the study ended. We had some really top-notch Minnesota dairies, the herd size averaged just under 1,000 cows per farm.
Joe: It's excellent to see. I know that the summary of all this stuff is that-- I'm a veterinarian, so I immediately look for conception rate and I look at all the repro stuff right away, and to see 10 points on first AI, that's a massive deal. A huge deal.
Amy: Absolutely.
Joe: Then you add all the other stuff in as well whether that's longevity or feed efficiency. I think one that we don't talk about enough is probably the increased call value. There's a lot there. We're looking at between 10 and 20% on the increase in call value. That's a big deal as well. All around I'm trying to find something that, why shouldn't I do it? Brad's always going to say, everyone should do it. I've been realizing a lot that not everything is for every hurt. If we take all the personal things out of it, like, I've raised Jerseys my whole life, so I'm going to stay with Jerseys, that kind of thing, take that out of it, where does this not fit? Is there a place that it doesn't fit?
Amy: Probably doing ProCROSS wouldn't be for you if you are into showing cows, and that's your favorite pastime in life, is packing up your string and going to shows for your summer vacations, because while these are great functional commercial cows, they're not show cows. We actually were able to measure the type scoring via linear scores too. We learned that the udders were deeper by a point on average. They're not fancy-uddered, but they're more functional-uddered cows because we were able to find that the teat placement on these cows, the rear teats were actually wider.
Meaning our Holsteins today have a tendency in some cases to have back teats that are touching or crossing in a few cases. That can be pretty frustrating for folks in the parlor. When you have crossbred cows with slightly wider rear teat placement, that can actually be a benefit. That's what I mean when I say perhaps a more functional udder. They're great functional cows, but they don't belong in a show ring. That'd be my only caution for someone maybe who might not appreciate this type of cow.
Joe: I am all for it. I identify very much so with ugly yet functional cows. That is all. I love it. I'm a big fan of--
Emily: Function over fashion, right, Joe?
Joe: That's me all day, every day.
Emily: I have a question because when you were talking about, Amy, how yes, we're seeing very close rear teats, potentially cross rear teats, and then it made me think instantly of how difficult those are not just in the parlor, but also in robots. Again, kind of anecdotally, were any of these dairies robot dairies or did they transition to robots during the course of the study?
Amy: They were not. All these dairies had conventional parlors, either a parallel herringbone or a rotary parlor.
Emily: Brad, you're on mute. We can see you yelling and pointing your finger, but--
Bradley: That's usually the way it is, right?
[laughter]
There is a robot herd in Wisconsin that uses ProCROSS Strauss and isn't robots, so it can work in a robot herd too.
Amy: We have customer herds within the ProCROSS company that do have the robots, and many that are interested in putting in robots because it's a popular and growing trend.
Bradley: Although one thing I would say is they might not be show cows and what kind of cow, and both Amy and I have had a great time in France and Sweden. We've been there and actually saw these breeds in their natural environment. I think if you ask some of these producers, some of these producers, even in California and Minnesota, they've all been to Europe to see these breeds.
That's where they really fall in love with these breeds. Once you see the pure breeds and their management style and systems, it's like, wow, these are good dairy breeds. At least that's my opinion. Going to see them, you'll get a bigger appreciation for these breeds if you see them all in a herd. It's nothing like seeing a herd of 100 Normandes or Montb�liarde or VikingRed all in one.
Emily: The Moos Room is going to Sweden. Is that what I'm hearing?
Bradley: Yes, we should.
Joe: If Bradley pays for it, I'm down.
Bradley: We'll figure out how to get some money to go to Europe to see these breeds, definitely. I'm all for that.
Emily: Brad, you could just get a grant or something.
Bradley: Exactly, grant money.
Joe: Grant money, grant money, grant, money.
Emily: Grant money, grant money, grant money.
Amy: Brad, I thought you were going to launch into talking about AOC cheeses, actually.
Bradley: That's a different podcast. We could talk about all the good cheeses and stuff they make.
Joe: Hey, maybe we should, we should do a cheese episode.
Emily: A cheese episode?
Bradley: That should be our other question. What's your favorite kind of cheese?
Amy: Oh my gosh, yes.
Joe: That's a difficult question.
Emily: Then if we have to keep it even, we'd have to be like, oh, what's your favorite kind of beef? It could just get out of control quickly.
Bradley: It could.
Joe: It really could.
Emily: That's the general theme of the show.
Bradley: Exactly.
Joe: One thing I want to throw out there before we really wrap things up a little bit here is that I think we presented that crossbreeding is an excellent choice for a lot of people. I want to caution everyone that this is not a solution for poor management, and Emily was getting at that earlier. If you have poor management, it doesn't matter what cows are in the system. Keep that in mind. It still matters more than anything else. Keep that in mind.
Emily: What you put into the cows is what you get out.
Joe: Exactly. What we talked about before was that people are a little scared, and it's a little daunting to start this whole process. Walk me through that. How would I get started if I wanted to do this? It's not an overnight thing, obviously.
Amy: That's a great thing to think about, because breeding takes a long time. We have to stop and think sometimes, we have a generation interval of three to five years for dairy cattle. A lot of the producers I work with in the ProCROSS company take one of two approaches. The most common one would be just to buy semen from either the Montb�liarde breed or the VikingRed breed and start in making F1 crosses, and then turn around and breed those F1s to the third breed two and a half years down the road, and get your three-breed crosses.
Then you can come back with that with Holstein, so that's how you make the third generation. Then if you picture a rotating circle in your mind, that's how you just keep rotating the three breeds around and around. Some of the herds that we started working with 20 years ago in the ProCROSS company, now they're on their sixth, seventh, and eighth generation of crossbreeding and they just continually rotate the three breeds. There's a variety of opinions about whether you should start with Montb�liarde or VikingRed. We don't endorse one direction for every herd.
However, we've learned through the research at the U of M, if you start with Montb�liarde, you get a little bit more profit if you start that way first. Maybe the reason for that is because Montb�liarde is a little bit more genetically distant from Holstein, so you might be getting a little bit more hybrid vigor on that cross than you would starting with VikingRed. That seems to be the most popular way to go. Although one way to reduce the body size of your cows immediately would be to start with the VikingRed. If you're working in an older facility, maybe with smaller stalls and you're really wanting to decrease body size right away, I'd certainly endorse starting with a VikingRed to get your F1s going.
The other thing I wanted to mention though, rather than breeding your way there, we have a few producers who instead choose to buy ProCROSS replacements or ProCROSS cows that are already several generations down the rotation. The advantage of doing that is that you jump right into a more homogeneous-looking cow system. You'll find that after you get going in the three-breed rotation after two, three, four generations, these cows tend to look pretty even just walking through the pens. Some people don't experience that with the F1 generation. If that's a concern, you might find better satisfaction just by finding someone who can sell you a few pot loads of the crosses already going.
Joe: I had seen the data on the Montb�liarde being a little more profitable to start that way, but size of cows is becoming a massive factor in all of this. There's people that are working in older facilities and they cannot have cows get too big. I think that's important. There's a lot of people that have even switched all the way to just milking Jerseys because their size restrictions are so big. That sounds really stupid. Size restrictions are an issue.
Amy: It's really a problem in some of the barns that I've seen. Jersey's our solution, but we've learned through the ProCROSS research that even the three-breed crosses sired by Holstein are still smaller than a pure Holstein. You're set up for a Holstein-size cow, but you just want her to fit in the stall better and not necessarily go as small as a Jersey, a ProCROSS cow might work out well for you because we can reduce frame size pretty substantially.
Joe: Now, how do you work beef into this whole system? A lot of people are breeding to beef. It's the same theory. You're just taking whoever doesn't make the cut and breeding to beef.
Amy: We have a lot of customers taking that route. We have a good lineup of sexed semen of all three breeds. If you like doing sexed semen on part of your herd, beef semen on the rest, that certainly works within the ProCROSS system too. Then conventional semen, if that fits into your plan, any of the above would work.
Joe: Amy, thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. We are going to wrap today. That is plenty. The wheels are coming off. I need sleep. Thank you, Amy, for being here. If you have questions, comments, scathing rebuttals for us, please send them to themoosroom@umn.eu.
Emily: That's T-H-E M-O-O-S R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Joe: We can get you in touch with Amy, but if you need more information about ProCROSS, please go to procross.info, all the information you need there. If you want to find more information from us, please visit extension.umn.edu and catch us on Facebook at UMN Beef and at UMN Dairy. Thank you for listening everybody. I'm going to go get some sleep.
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Emily: The wheels were just falling off from the beginning.
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