Integrating Sexcel® Male Beef Sexed genetics into your breeding strategy enhances the profitability of your beef cross dairy calves. Typically, male beef cross progeny generate higher profits for the entire supply chain throughout their whole lifecycle. This profitability often begins at the dairy farm level, where many farmers earn an average of £70-£100 more for male beef cross calves compared to female beef cross calves. This advantage extends through to the rearing and finishing, as calves grow faster, have fewer days to harvest and produce more valuable carcasses.
The graph below demonstrates how Sexcel Male Beef fits seamlessly into an enhanced sexed and beef breeding strategy. This involves breeding your high-performing females with Sexcel Female Dairy genetics to create superior replacement females for your herd. Next, breeding your first and second lactation cows with Sexcel Male Sexed Beef genetics to produce high-value male beef calves, while lower-end animals should be bred with conventional NuEra Beef Genetics for male and female beef cross calves.
How to perform an enhanced breeding strategy
Sexcel Male Sexed Beef genetics offers exceptional fertility performance, achieving comparable conception rates to conventional beef semen when used on the same group of females. The resulting male beef cross calves are easily born, with short gestation lengths to maximise animal welfare and ensure the dam has a profitable lactation. Further up the supply chain, these animals grow faster, have fewer days to harvest and yield more valuable carcasses. In turn this creates demand for NuEra beef animals from beef finishers, processors and retailers.
Increasing the number of male beef cross calves born from your breeding strategy significantly improves efficiency and profitability of beef production.
Customer success with Angus Male Sexed Beef genetics
John and Sue Redmayne have experienced great success using Sexcel Male Angus genetics. They have achieved an average conception of 50% using these genetics and their business has benefitted from a higher percentage of easy calving male calves.
Their year-round calving herd of 220 Holsteins has benefitted from using conventional NuEra Angus Genetics for many years, specifically using these sires on their lower genetic merit animals. This strategy has resulted in profitable beef calf crops but has been further enhanced by incorporating male sexed semen into their breeding strategy.
Using Genus ABS GENEadvance® genomic data, combined with advice from their Breeding Advisor, Isabel Moore, the Redmaynes’ created a tailored breeding strategy.
Strategic breeding strategy to meet long term goals
To meet their business model and replacement heifer needs, they currently breed 35% of the herd to Sexcel Female Dairy genetics, 20% to Sexcel Male Beef genetics and the remainder to conven- tional NuEra Beef Genetics. This approach evolved from a previous 50/50 dairy/beef breeding strategy, driven by increased fertility and calving ease within the herd. Having a bespoke breeding strategy allows John and Sue to breed the right animals to sexed dairy semen whilst breeding less genetically interesting cows to beef to help drive profitability.
At Cuerdale Hall Farm, the milk is supplied to Arla/Tesco, with an average milk yield per cow of 9,300 litres per year. Instead of focusing solely on milk production when selecting bulls, they place emphasis on herd longevity, increasing the number of lactations per cow to an average of 3.4, with a replacement rate of 26%.
John and Sue have seen significant benefits from using Sexcel® Male Angus genetics, enjoying easy calving and high calf premiums. When it came to selling his beef animals, John found that the males received a higher return on investment compared to the heifers at all stages, including selling them as calves, selling as store cattle and when finishing through to deadweight. For John, the choice is clear: “All day long for the Angus breed, even up to 18-months stores, there is a massive gap on the gender”.
Invest in male Sexcel® Male Sexed Beef today by contacting your local Genus ABS breeding advisor or head to bull search to see our full portfolio of bulls.
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