Kudos to Don Nevill and Son of Clare, Michigan

Michigan Cattleman’s Association was pleased to announce that beef from a well- known Michigan cattleman was fed in the “White House” during the last 4^th of July celebration in our nation’s capital.

Don Nevill began his Angus herd with the family dairy farm when he was 14 years old (he won’t tell us how many years ago that was).    After he started Nevill Fence Supply, their dairy was closed down and the beef cow herd began ramping up.

Don is a past board member of Michigan Cattleman’s Association, which many of us feel is the most effective farm producer support organization in the state.    We decided to join MCA after our second year as an exhibitor at Spring Beef Expo and meeting their dynamic manager, George Quackenbush, who explained to us ways that MCA coordinates with efforts of the national beef checkoff run by USDA.

We were also influenced by Earl Souva of Great Lakes Sire Service (Bronson MI), which is one of the leading custom semen collection and bull housing facilities in the Midwest.    Earl is a recent past president of MCA who originally invited us to participate in Spring Beef Expo.     His business is qualified to ship semen around the world, which is a potential support benefit to Michigan purebred breeders.

Dairy replacement heifers hit $4,000 - For Beef Farmers

Now why should any beef producer care how high dairy breed replacement heifers are selling?   Because the beef cull market  (for “spent” cows)  establishes the floor value for both dairy AND beef replacement cows.    When dairy cows are at their highest-ever prices in history, you will know that cull prices are also at or near peak prices, helping to subsidize the purchases, so the beef cow replacement prices will not be far behind dairy cows.

Record high deacon calf prices  (bulls AND heifers)  FIRST reflect flat prices for all major feed commodities (hay, haylage, corn, corn silage, soybeans) as feedlot operators are still willing to buy light feeders at good prices;  so many calf feeders feel confident they can recover the calf prices and continue to pay $1000 for Holstein (dairy) bull calves and a hefty premium for any beef cross calf (most of which are currently born from lower-valued or slower breeding dairy cows).

It has been said before:   we have 50% more  people  than there were in 1962, but 25% fewer beef momma cows than 1962.    Prices for retail beef finally responded to this during the Covid pandemic, and have not fallen back since then. Even cattlemen who used to lose money raising calves to sell as feeders  (unless they had cattle that could do it on grass alone)  now can make enough profit to stay in business.   However, the replacement female supply is not very large, as market prices divert many to feedlots…  thus regrowth of the national cow herd will be a slow one  (especially if we continue to have blizzard winters, drought summers, and forest fires out west where the cheapest rangeland sits).

Good herd fertility genetics and reproduction management is the cheapest strategy for you if you wish to grow your cow-calf herd.    The dairy industry struggles with this thanks to decades of genetic focus more on fast maturity of production and less on reproductive ability.   If you follow advice from people like Dr Allan Williams, you will breed for longevity in your cows.

QUICK HAY CROP AFTER WHEAT HARVEST

 

Byron Seeds offers “Teff Grass”, which is also known as “Israeli wheat”.    When your grass pastures are in summer heat dormancy, this stuff will grow vigorously and produce a crop of fine stem, soft leaf hay that has great palatability.

In planting after wheat, you get the benefit of a crop that will help suppress the weeds that show up in the wheat stubble.    As an annual, you will get one cut and once you get a heavy frost, it will kill out, but leave you with a clean field for your next spring row crop of soybeans or corn.

Or, as it is unrelated to any grass or legume, there is no allopathic effect to inhibit a following spring seeding on well-drained soil.

Byron has an incredible variety of seeds—corn, soybeans, small grains, sorghums all types, brassicas, “Synergy X” alfalfa blends, higher energy grass varieties, and cover crop mixes.    There is so much creativity built into their offerings.    Ask us for the “summer annual” book.

 

Mich Livestock Service, Inc       “For the Best in Bulls”      and high energy seeds
(989) 834- 2661                   Ovid, MI 48866               www.michiganlivestock.com

OUR FAVORITE ‘MATERNAL” ANGUS BULL

 

Mark Curry        (989) 984- 7027         Route Service and Sales
Sue Palen           (989) 277- 0480         “Cattle Visions” order desk / products program
Greg Palen         (989) 277- 6031         Certified Seed Specialist /  refresher AI training

Mich Livestock Service, Inc     “For the Best in Bulls”      “High Energy Forage Seed”
110 N Main St   (PO Box 661)   Ovid,  MI  48866                      phone (989) 834- 2661
email:  greg@michiganlivestock.com        website:  www.michiganlivestock.com         (Facebook)

 

K R  SYNERGY  7023    (page six at bottom, Cattle Visions 2025 catalog)

This guy has been around for several years and remains popular in the Angus breeding world, and while described for superior performance (for example, 115 weaning ratio)  the proportions of his phenotype as translated into females shows the “maternal” physique and an ability to make milk.

     
If you have online access, check out the photos of his females on his page in the Cattle Visions website, Angus section.    His trait profile has some indicators of maternal ability also, and he has been a consistent semen producer (good libido in a bull often translates to fecundity in his females).

 

Make breeding into a new profit center

 

There is a $1000 profit per salable fresh heifer in current market prices over the costs of rearing a dairy heifer.     When everyone is chasing the highest deacon calf prices,  the opportunity in raising salable replacements just gets bigger and better.

The cycles in agriculture (prices and cost) always seem to favor that farmer who is able to pursue a counter-cyclical management strategy.    In Dairy, that has always been the dairyman who produces more heifers than he needs.    Today it pays the best it has ever paid in my lifetime.   Is your breeding strategy up to the challenge to help supply the endless demand for replacement dairy cows?    All it takes first is a shift in favor of “longevity” selection and “adaptable physique” mating.

Let us help you make that transition.    You might even save money in the process short-term, but more importantly, will increase farm income longer-term.

 

Mich Livestock Service, Inc        ph (989) 834- 2661         “For the Best in Bulls”
Triple-Hil Sires, Masterpiece Sires, No Bull Solutions, Blondin Sires, AG3 Genetics, AI Total
New Generation Genetics (Brown Swiss), Sustainable Genetics and Reverence Farms (Jersey)

There is no PRODUCTION without prior REPRODUCTION

 

Poultry farmers know this—“no eggs, no income”.    Swine producers know this as well—“no sows nursing piglets, no pork chops to sell”.     Sheep flocks are pushed to lamb twice in fifteen months.   Beef cow-calf operators know this very painfully at today’s calf values—“no calf, no income”.    Why when it comes to Dairy, has the production industry been so casual about reproduction?

Remember when Monsanto was promoting the eighteen month calving interval, and some of the rBST users were bragging up 1000-day lactations (cows who only calved once in their life)?

Today’s replacement heifer shortage  (in spite of widespread use of “gender selected” semen)  and the record-setting prices that are now double what springing heifers brought as recently as three years ago,  brings me to review all the high technology adaptive concepts that have been promoted to trusting dairymen, in the constant chase for “more milk”.

It really all began with the development of Predicted Transmitting Ability, the ranking of sires primarily on first-lactation milk volume.   Heifers who “peaked” the highest gave their sires the magic +1000 PD Milk rating, even if it took them 500 days to calve back—only the first 305 days’ milk multiplied by “ME” (Mature Equivalent) factors counted “genetically”.     In each generation bred this way, average conception rates fell, average calving intervals fell, percentage of stillborn calves increased, and incidence of post-calving metabolic disease rose.     The Genetics industry blamed your bad luck on nutritionists and veterinarians, instead of taking responsibility for the accumulating inbreeding effects from “single trait” genetic selection they promote.

Breeders who continued to base their breeding programs on strong maternal lines with strong natural fertility and competitive longevity could not compete with a genetic ranking system that was biased in favor of sire stacks of +1000  PD Milk bulls.    Today, under Genomic theories, cow values cannot produce enough “data” to alter the sire-centric pedigree-bound calculations.

How  do  we  reclaim  profitable  levels  of  fertility  in  our  dairy  herds?

The industry error is to act as if “selection” and “mating” are one and the same.   Cull rates, and  75 years of herd observations in the “aAa” breeding guide, prove these two functions different.     By ignoring this, basing all selection on intragenerational sire comparison, the half of your herd genetic profile descended from your cow lines  is being mismanaged.    Your best cows are not being given the chance to produce the best possible offspring.    Your worst cow is treated as if she will breed exactly the same as your best cows.    New cull cows are being reproduced.

Milk yield is half sire genetics, half cow physical capability  and “aAa” focuses on the physique.

Taking Care When Handling Semen to Optimize Conception

  Mark Curry    (989) 984- 7027         Route Services and Sales
Sue Palen       (989) 277- 0480         Office Coordinator/ Products program
Greg Palen     (989) 277- 6031         “aAa” Breeding Guide / Certified Seed Specialist

Mich Livestock Service, Inc    “For the Best in Bulls”    “High Energy Forage Seed”
110 N Main St   (PO Box 661)   Ovid,  MI  48866                    phone (989) 834- 2661
email: greg@michiganlivestock.com             website:  www.michiganlivestock.com

 

Sending and receiving ”vapor phase” cryogenic shippers
Your farm tank is charged with liquid nitrogen, at a temperature of -320 degrees F.    Our truck inventory tanks are also liquid tanks, so when you buy semen it is at -320F temperature, and the general processor recommendation is that the canes should transfer from supply tank to your tank in less than ten seconds.    When dealing with 1/4cc straws (sexed or imported semen) the recommendation is less than eight seconds.     Here is where problems start:  the neck tube of your tank only has nitrogen vapor which rises to -140 degrees F.    As canes or straws come out of the neck, they rise above -140 degrees F, which is the minimum safe temperature for semen transport—thus the “less than ten” and “less than eight” second rules.

Most semen today is shipped via UPS or Federal Express in “Doble” or “vapor phase” shippers (DOT rules do not allow parcel carriers to handle “wet” nitrogen tanks).    Thus shipped semen is only at -140 degrees F during transport.    When we receive shippers here, we pour them full of liquid nitrogen before extracting semen, in order for protective liquid (-320F cold) to be in the straw cups when they move to our storage and transport.    Without this step, it is easy for the semen arriving via UPS to be damaged just removing it from the vapor shipper.    For most of us, if we order semen to be shipped direct to our farms (bypassing someone like us) you run the risk of damage in handling it from the shipper into your semen tank.    Again, the risk is greater if the semen (like gender selected) is packaged in the smaller diameter 1/4cc straws.

Pulling straws from your tank in order to breed cows
If you look in the neck of your semen tank, you will see there is a line of frost a couple inches down in.    This is the line above which canisters should not be pulled, it indicates how high the “safe” -140F temperature for stored semen is for your tank.    Using tweezers to extract straws inside the neck of the tank, preserves your remaining inventory at safe temps.    Pull a canister above the neck of the tank will progressively damage your semen, reducing conception rates.

Here is what happened to one of our suppliers
They sent semen on eight bulls to an independent AI service in Arkansas by UPS, in vapor tanks.   As cows began to be bred, conception rates were falling.    Retrieving the unused semen, we had it evaluated by Hawkeye Breeders’ lab in Iowa.     As part of the test, we separated straws out of TOP cups from straws in BOTTOM cups, same bulls.    Uniformly, the semen looked better from BOTTOM cups (which stayed in the body of the tank) but looked poorer from TOP cups.   It was easy to infer that these inseminators were poorly trained in semen handling and storage;  but it could also indicate that they had no nitrogen available to reliquefy the shipper before removing the canes when received.   

Avoid  overstocking  canes  in  your  own  tank
When it is time to breed a cow, you will go to your tank to pull out a straw of semen.    Again, as we think about the “ten second” (1/2cc) and “eight second” (1/4cc) rules, ask yourself how easy you (first)  find the  individual cane  with the chosen bull;  then (second)  extract a  single straw from that cane, returning the cane back down into the canister and the canister back down into the body of the tank.    If you hear a lot of sizzling when returning cane and canister, consider it may be taking you too long  to do this.     How much of that extra time is used up trying to find the right cane, pulling the cane away from other canes in the canister, and drawing out a straw from it?     Over time, you are creating the same damage to straws in the upper cups of canes that we could document from the semen testing experiment we did with Hawkeye Breeders.

It has become a strong suggestion from semen suppliers to avoid ordering in quantities other than 5 straw multiples, so that no one in the delivery chain has to separate straws out of a cup and transfer them into another cup.    This is part of the industry effort to maintain conception.

Avoid  thawing  multiple  straws  at  once  when  group  breeding
With straw technology it only takes 40 seconds to fully thaw a 1/2cc straw in 95 degree F water, less than 30 seconds to fully thaw a 1/4cc straw in 95 degree F water.    By contrast, if straws are left in thaw bath for longer than 15 minutes, the activated sperm cells begin to suffocate.   Now that so many Ov Synch “timed breeding” groups are done, especially in larger expansion herds, we see lower conception rates mostly related to expecting an inseminator to breed many cows at a time with no assistance in moving cows to chutes or loading AI guns before walking alleys.    Too many of them will thaw an entire cup or cane of straws at once.   Can they really get ten (or even five) cows accurately inseminated in less than 15 minutes??      

Try  to  locate  semen  tanks  and  AI  equipment  close  to  the  breeding  area
Having to carry a loaded breeding gun the length of a barn or free-stall pen in all but summer temperatures, can expose the thawed semen to “cold shock” which has been known for years to damage seasonal conception rates.    Live sperm cells expect to be at near body temperature.