Making the most of 2200 cows with genomics

Farm extends to some 5200 acres

Admittedly, labour costs are huge, but with modern technology such as Semex’ ai24 and immunity+ which has helped to reduce man hours amongst the cows, the business has been able to provide contract labour services for two other dairies.
Like the UK, sourcing good staff is proving increasing difficult here and finding people who want to work on a farm let alone milk cows, is a struggle, so leasing out experienced staff when possible is adding to the income side.
Key to the success of this massive venture which has more than doubled since David came on board in 2001, has been the use of the best genetics available with all heifers genomically tested for the past four years.

Herd manager and part owner, David Harvatine who was speaking at last month's Semex conference in Glasgow

“I’m not a geneticist, I’m a farmer, or cowman who loves genetics,” David told a packed audience at last month’s Semex conference in Glasgow.
“We’ll have 100-140 heifer calves born every month, so we keep the best 70-75 and sell the rest from six months of age onwards. We also get hairs from the highest genomically tested heifer calves at birth to test so we know their figures and test the rest of the heifer calves at 4-5months.”
Add to that culling hard for mastitis, poor fertility and milk yields and the heifers at Aurora Ridge boast an impressive +2300 GTPI.
Such genetic improvements have admittedly proved costly, but the investment is bearing fruit at the other end, with heifer calf sales peaking at $160,000 for the six-month-old Aurora Octoberfest 17048, +2790G, out of a VG85, 2yr Mogul.
The heifer, which was 286 genomic points over parent average was sold at the 2016 National Holstein Convention in Saratoga Sprins, NY, to Peak Genetics and changed hands with a $10,000 embryo contract to Genes Diffusion (four embryos at $2500).
Needless to say, the best sexed semen is purchased for the lead 20% of the herd’s two year-old heifers, with 75% of the herd then AI’d to top end bulls and the remaining 10-15% to ‘pooled’ Aberdeen Angus Semex semen.
Fertility rates have been improved too by relying more on Semex’ AI 24, which David said has resulting in “pretty much 100% conception rates.”
“We have an AI group with 230 stalls, but we normally run 300-350 heifers there, so we were missing heifers in heat visually.
“Since we installed the ai24 Heatime system in 2012, we now know exactly where every heifer is in her cycle and when her best heat timing for AI is,” said David who also uses the system for recipient heifers with the result that embryo conception rates are now 80% plus.
“Before, we were looking at 100% of the cattle to find 5% of the problems and now we only have to look at 5% to find 95% of the problems,” he said adding that the system is based around cattle wearing heat detection collars
The ai24 system takes all of the manual work out of heat detection, with the special motion detecting collars analysing a cow’s normal individual movements and behaviour and then determining the changes in her behaviour when she comes bulling.
The 24-hour activity monitoring also highlights fresh cows with lower activity than normal, which is often a sign a cow is unwell – features which have enabled the business to significantly reduce its antibiotic use.
“If you screw up the transition period and the fresh cow at the start, you screw up everything as you will not get the fertility or milk yield.
“We used to treat 40-45% of our fresh cows with antibiotics for uterine infections, but that figure has been dramatically reduced to 10-15%,” David said.
Add to that, Immunity + which is producing healthier calves that are more resistant to disease, allowing the herd to simplify its vaccine programme and labour and vet and med costs have been reduced.
“The thing about technology is everyone wants to know how much it costs, but you should be asking more about how it will benefit your business in the future.

Aurora Octoberfest 17048 sold for a whopping $160,000 at six months of age

“We want to push the genetics and quality of our cows so we can get more milk out of the same engine but also look at the efficiency of producing that milk.
“The best and most profitable cows are always the ones which you hardly ever see because they are never ill and so never really cost anything,” concluded David.
According to Semex’ global dairy solution’s co-ordinator, Dr Steven Larmer, The Immunity+ concept is a simple one built on 20 years of immune-genetic research by Dr Bonnie Mallard at the University of Guelph in Canada.
Genes for high immune response are highly heritable at around 30%, which is similar to production traits.
This means that cows bred from sires with higher levels of immunity will inherit genes that better equip them to resist most commonly occurring diseases like mastitis, listerosis, brucellosis, E. coli, bacterial pneumonia, metritis, and digital dermatitis.
Therefore Immunity+ offspring cows have less disease and also respond better to commercial vaccines and have better quality colostrum, he told delegates.
Trials on a large dairy in the US showed that in such cows mastitis rates fell 27%, metritis levels by 17% and the incidence of retained placentas by 32%, he reported.
Another saw a 19% fall in mastitis, a 21% fall in metritis and an 8% fall in retained placentas, among falls in other disease incidences.
Collating the results of 35 dairies and covering 35,000 cows showed that Immunity+ sired cows had 10% fewer cases of mastitis, 12% fewer incidences of lameness, and 10% fewer cases of miscellaneous illnesses.
Mortality in cows was 20% less and was also 16% down in heifers.
When the findings of the study was applied to a UK situation, with average disease incidences taken, the value of Immunity+ was put at a conservative £77, he said.
“Immunity+ sires build up the disease resistance genes for healthier cows and more profitable dairies,” he concluded.