In Memoriam -- Charles Palen

Charles W Palen, Jr – founder of Michigan Livestock Service, Inc – passed away Saturday January 3^rd, after a brief illness.    He was in his 92^nd year, and is now released from a years-long decline in memory that had increasingly curtailed his social activity.     He was (with Jack Van Hoven of  General Genetics) considered a pioneer in the modern phase of the artifical insemination industry, in which he and Jack as “friendly competitors” worked together developing AI schooling and on-farm semen storage to provide independence to cattlemen who wished to be in control of their genetic selection and mating decisions.

For the few of you who may still remember him, our family chose these beneficiaries:

Hospice House of Shiawassee County, 2005 Copas Rd, Owosso MI 48867

VFW Post 8964, c/o Leonard Huyck, 1106 N Shepardsville Rd, Ovid MI 48866

National Dairy Shrine, c/o David Selner, PO Box 725, Denmark WI 54208

Ever hear of A2 vs A1 Beta Casein??

The protein structures in milk are called “caseins”.    Each form is a result of the animal possessing a sequence of genes to produce it.    “Kappa Casein” affects cheese curd formation (BB K/C is preferred for higher cheese yields)—“Beta Casein” affects immune function and how proteins act after ingestion.

Keith Woodford (an agricultural research professor at Lincoln University in New Zealand) wrote a book in 2007 titled Devil in the Milk—reviewed in “Acres USA”, promoted by the Weston Price Foundation - which linked one Beta Casein gene variant (A1) with a host of current health issues: heart and arterial disease, autism, type 1 diabetes, and schizophrenia.   A1 variant is a mutation first found in Northern European and North American dairy cattle, while the A2 variant is still primary to Southern European, African and Asian cattle.     (There are in fact 12 gene variants of Beta casein; only three of significant frequency.    The original A2 variant is the basis for the wholesome reputation of “milk”.    The fact of A1’s existence could destroy this hard-fought reputation, if promoted by vegan activists.)

The mutated fragment is called “beta casomorphin 7” which is a powerful opioid (narcotic) as well as an oxidant, and Dr Woodford’s book quotes over 100 research papers to assemble the evidence.   BCM-7 is now associated with lactose intolerance and auto-immune diseases (type 1 diabetes is such a disease).  

Distribution within breeds

Known dairy breeds vary in the proportion of A2 (“good”) to B (“OK”) to A1 (“bad”) alleles possessed. 

Guernsey:   (1991 study)     88% to 97%  A2:       1% to   2% B:     1% to  6%   A1      (USA cows)

Jersey:        (1991)               49% to 52%  A2:     29% to 37% B:     9% to 22%  A1      (USA cows)

                   (1997)                            59%  A2:                 29% B:               12%  A1       (New Zealand)

                   (1990)               58% to 65%  A2:                 35% B:                  7%  A1       (Denmark)

Holstein:     (1990-1991)     24% to 62%  A2:       1% to  6% B:     31% to 66% A1       (USA)

                   (1997)                            51%  A2:                  3% B:                 46%  A1      (New Zealand)

                   (1997)               47% to 60%  A2:       2% to 10% B:    40% to 47%  A1      (Europe)

Fleckveih:   (1997)              56% to 63%  A2:                  15% B:    19% to 34%  A1      (Germany)

Ayrshire:     (1997)              49% to 53%  A2:              - -                43% to 51%  A1      (Finland & NZ)

                    (1992)              28% to 40%  A2:                   1% B:     60% to 72%  A1      (USA & UK)

Euro Red:    (1997)              23% to 53%  A2:       1% to  6% B:     46% to 71%  A1      (Sweden et al)

Consequences of the distribution of Beta Casein knowledge

The organic dairy industry is rapidly embracing the A2 vs A1 Beta casein difference, as it provides an added basis for justification of a premium product price.    Stoneyfield Yogurt and the Organic Valley marketing cooperative are both encouraging their supplier grazing farms to test their cows in preference for A2 carriers, and to breed accordingly, exclusively to A2A2 sires.    (Some earlier research suggested that grass-based dairy nutrition programs enhance the production of the A2 Beta casein benefits.)

Testing your cows for the Beta casein gene markers is costly ($22-$30 per sample) but possible (the A2 Corporation of New Zealand has lab agents in Oregon and northern Michigan)—in perspective, it is less than the annual cost of entering a cow on DHIA for one year.   Currently, the only AI system publishing Beta Casein markers on their sires is LIC New Zealand (available through us, distributed by Taurus in the USA) but we would anticipate other AI systems to test sires of interest as farm demand increases.    

How hard is it to breed  for  A2 and  away from  A1  beta casein?

Until all AI sires are tested and their markers published, it will be difficult.   The “safe” route is to focus on the LIC New Zealand sires (many of which were recently “aAa” analyzed) because you can select on known possession of A2A2.    If you milk Guernseys you hardly have to worry—if you milk Jerseys, in two generations you could likely eliminate the A1 presence (only 7% to 22% frequency), as these gene variants are simple alleles (not dominant vs recessive) thus selecting in favor of one consistently reduces the other in frequency.    If you milk Holsteins, it may take three or four generations because the level of A1 is three times as high as randomly distributed.     (You will note that some of the worst A1 frequency is in the Euro Red breeds that have been popularized in crossbreeding.)    

Cross breeding is no substitute for selection on the gene marker.    Those whose milk production system and cattle marketing has been promoted on “grass adaptation” and “healthier crossbred cows” are not in any way prepared to claim milk product superiority under A2 vs A1.    In this situation, it is your choices in sires—not choices in breeds—that will determine where you start, and how quickly you get where the market may influence you to go.                     

But I prefer the highest TPI or Net Merit sires—why pay any attention to this stuff?

The definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing you have always done, while expecting a different result than you have always received.    What has a focus on “genetic value” given us?   More milk per cow lactation—but fewer lactations:  lower average milk components, thus lower milk prices:  shorter herdlife, thus higher replacement overhead:  slower fertility, thus more reproduction expense; 

extreme physiques, thus more hoof trimming and stall injury expenses.     Genetic value has no “value” unless you are able to harvest a margin of profit over all input costs.      Developing markets for milk from herds that will dedicate to selection on A2A2 genetics promise some serious price premiums based not on emotion, but on science.

A1 vs A2 is just the first of what may be many examples of why Genomics could be our most powerful selection tool, but by only using it to estimate PTA values, we have trivialized its true potential.    Those who are locked into conventional volume-based pooled “commodity milk” marketing have nothing to be gained from a focus on A2 selection today—but the impact of this knowledge on milk’s consumers, as it gains traction in the media’s oversight on food issues, could be a worse blow to “generic jug milk” than the anti biotech reaction to rBST—because we cannot quit using it overnight to satisfy a market demand.

Short term strategies

The frequency in the Kiwi cow population does not appear to be significantly above North America’s frequencies – thus we should be able to identify A2 carriers in the USA and Canada.     Study the lesson and encourage dairy leadership to become proactive in addressing what may be a future opportunity.

What we can find when we look deeper into sire pedigrees

This is from the 2010 June-July Michigan Livestock Service Newsletter

Ask any dairyman what he wants from semen, and he will say “more milk”.   But ask what bothers him most about his herd, and he will say “cows don’t last long enough”.     Increasingly, we are recognizing that the source of “longevity” in cows is to pick from longer-functional life ancestors.
 

If you were to compare this pedigree to most AI young sires, you would find the typical dams only show one lactation—a big 2 yr old record that set up a high index, after which the cow enters ET flushing.  No later lactations are ever shown—most such cows never calve but once, thus are unable to prove they own any genetic capability to function as you would ask them to do in your herd.    If this a multiple generation pattern in the pedigree, the lack of proven longevity can turn into a lack of the genes to support functions that you need your cows to have.    Think about it.      Where did short herdlife cows come from anyway?

PTA indicators related to selection for longevity: 

Cow fertility rate (DPR)  General health (SCS)  Will to live (Stillbirths)   Months in production (PL)

None of these actually address all the factors (including type) that would influence selection to improve

“longevity” (the ability of a cow to remain productive and functional into mature ages).

For any cow to perform as these do, they have to have the basic fertility to breed back, the stamina to survive calving and thrive in milking, breed back again, calve again, milk some more—all the while functioning in an environment (walking on concrete, getting in and out of stalls, competing at a bunk, hot or cold weather notwithstanding, sturdy legs, healthy udders, and a strong will to live).   This is the pedigree we are seeking to make your job easier.   The type score ages reinforce the production record.

Cows must possess youthful and correct type to gain or maintain EX scores at mature ages.

The  way  to  find  the “outlier”  bull  is  through  his  pedigree

In spite of all the excitement over Genomic potential, dairymen are starting to realize that it does not provide any new information— nor can it insure accuracy of any individual’s genetic evaluation.

Genomics does not replace what we can learn from a careful review of the full pedigree of available sires.    Unfortunately, fewer AI systems deem it important to provide this useful information.    Pedigrees contain the clues to successfully breeding for longevity.     Some of the deepest maternal pedigrees in AI can be found at Taurus, Foundation, International Protein and Excalibur Sires.

If your goal is to breed cows that last longer, no one can help you more than we can.

It was probably inevitable

From May 2010 Route Letter

USDA’s Animal Improvement Programs Laboratory (AIPL) over the past two years has developed AI conception rate summaries for sires, assuming calculations previously done by regional Dairy Records Processing Centers (DRPCs) such as Provo, UT and Raleigh, NC.

Now it appears the Sire Conception Rate data will not be updated for April 2010 summaries—it seems that one of the larger midwest DHI programs (owned by an AI cooperative) only chose to report data on sires with “their” stud code!        (AIPL’s website indicates they will address these problems.)

Sire summaries for production, health and fitness (fertility) traits are only as good as the data collection and on-farm sire ID procedures used by DHIA.    Nationally, almost half of DHI data arrives at AIPL in a condition that indicates errors, thus throwing it out for sire and cow indexes.      

If you are on test, do not take shortcuts with the data you submit to testers who are not being paid extra for getting the paperwork correct.    If you need our help with sire registration numbers (simple format errors in the number of zeros in a stud code will get sire IDs thrown out) let us know.   Also do not let testers determine your culling reasons for why cows leave—all this information has genetic value only when it presents causes accurately, rather than a pre-conceived (thus historically biased) picture.

Net Merit? TPI? Type? Pedigree? How should we pick bulls today ???

The next USDA “base change” is going to occur in 2010.     This means the range of PTA yield values will be slightly reduced.    This change usually subtracts 500 pounds of PTA milk from historical sires, and readjusts downward all current sires according to the relative performance of most recent offspring.

Dairymen today pay less attention to sire evaluation changes than was true ten+ years ago—today it is mostly a concern of purebred breeders trying to compete in the “numbers” game.    But many AI sales people try to inject excitement back into sire selection by making a big deal of base changes—the time when “old” bulls get culled, and “new” bulls show up at the top of indexing lists.

Given we have had +2000m sires for four decades, at the top of AI offerings, and frozen semen to make them more easily available, why is the average base change only +500m per generation?

Is it that we are not able to manage that rate of production gain within basically “fixed” environments, feeding technology our only way to “upgrade” facilities to higher genetic potential?    Or is it, as many commentators always suggest, “we place too much emphasis on ‘secondary’ traits like type”??

Indexing formulas change while no one is looking

In a recent conversation with a fairly aware young Holstein breeder, I was surprised to learn he did not know that, in the current version of “Lifetime Net Merit” (USDAs primary sire ranking index), pounds of Milk carries a zero $ value.        That’s right—times have changed since Clint Meadows taught us all that “PD Milk is the primary selection trait”.     Today, when you analyze milk checks, gross milk yield is equated with the water left after you remove all the Butterfat, Protein and Mineral solids… those milk components that make milk unique and marketable.

Likewise, every couple of years, Holstein’s TPI formula, or Jersey’s JPI formula, will go through some massive recalculation, usually because breeders become dissatisfied with the cumulative impact of the trait preferences of the prior version of the formula.     As casual semen buyers, we see the same term of “TPI” or “JPI” so we assume using it for sire selection keeps us consistent.    In fact, it is pushing your herd from one fad to another, and may not be helping you solve problems unique to your herd a bit.

When you challenge the orthodoxy of “ranking index”, everyone thinks you are crazy—but on any level of biology related to gene pairing, trait heritability, or physical adaptation, the Rel% of an index is zero.   

Indexes were designed to sell semen and embryos—not to guarantee cattle improve from matings.

What kind of cows do you wish to milk??

There is a common sense reason why people today select on more than just PTA Milk.   They wish the increases in milk production to be sustainable, they wish the increases to be cost effective, and they wish to avoid a loss in milk price per cwt as the volume of milk produced increases.

The only way to look at “more genetic milk” is to first determine what changes in milk production will produce the most income gain on your dairy.    For anyone whose SCCs are too high or whose blended bf% and pr% are too low, the more important become pounds and percent butterfat, pounds and percent protein, and lowering the SCC selection level (3.00 is standardized breed average).     Higher bf% and pr% will raise milk price, both on the attained “management” herd average, and the genetic gain if any. 

How important is type?

The less “type” you have, the more important it is.    Why?    Because improving “type” has more impact on reducing the incidence of short herdlife cows, than it really has on gaining cow longevity.  

Weak traits (shallow feet in combination with refined bones, loosely attached udders in combination with weak ligament supports, bad teat placement with strutting teats, shallow and/or narrow chests) can indicate a short herdlife.    When the overall animal just looks “frail” to the classifier, the net result will also be a lower final score.     The highest correlation among bulls with type problems and a negative Productive Life (PTA- PL) is that daughter score averages below 76 indicate “below average” type even if the bull is plus PTA Type (his daughters are bad, but the herdmates were worse= “plus” type).

Type data would correlate higher with PL ratings if the scoring system would (a) quit comparing the new heifers to contemporaries, instead compare them to a minimum standard of functional traits; (b) give the wider bodied heifers more credit for “dairyness” [reduce the weighting of ‘angularity”].

What really drives longevity?

No single trait has more impact on longevity than cow fertility.     Think about your own herd and be honest--   (1)  If an “ugly” heifer breeds back on time, you will keep her; (2)  If a “pretty” heifer does not breed back, you will sell her.      Likewise, no matter how much a heifer milks, if she does not breed on time, and drops below x pounds per day, you will sell her to make room for the next fresh heifer.   Thus all other traits being equal, Fertility determines how long a cow stays in a dairy herd.

Next to “fertility” we also need “health”.    In a broad sense, as an unhealthy cow cannot sustain a level of production profitable to the dairy, only healthy cows are retained for future production.    One of the most important health researches was the Canadian study in which it was found that higher SCC heifers  do not sustain predicted higher levels of production in second or later lactations thus indicates a faster aging, shorter herdlife, and a lower lifetime milk yield.     [The exceptions will be really high bf% and pr% sires—due to inexact methods of SCC testing in use.    “SCC” is not specific to mastitis infection; heel warts and foot rot are more likely to send a cow’s SCC through the roof.]

Foot and Leg problems will cull cows quicker than poor udder traits.    Poor mobility will cause a cow to spend less time at the bunk eating—more time lying in her stall (or in the alley).    Poor udder shapes we put up with as long as lots of milk can be pried from that udder.     Unfortunately, the two most primary type determinants of good mobility—(1) Thurl position, (2) Front leg position—are not measured in any linear type scoring system.     [The “aAa” breeding guide does analyze Thurls and Front Legs.]

Create your own trait selection matrix – then mate cows for physical balance

The lesson in all this is—approach sire selection additively, seeking sires strong in those traits costing you the most in your present herd; approach mating physically, matching sires to cows to produce more structural balance, as well as more uniform expression of growth rates, size and dairy capacity.

Selecting for more PTA Milk than the current frame capacity of your cows (and energy density of your forages) can sustain, is a wasted genetic opportunity.    Mating cows randomly, believing a higher index on paper is going to produce a more lifetime productive cow on the hoof, misunderstands a primary fact of biology: you can only breed a cow to a single bull, not to an “average” of his breed, or the index rank

A sire selection based on longevity of production produces a second income—

                                                                                  From surplus reproduction.

This is part of the message that has always sustained independent AI distribution, and made a good income for its many customers—the understanding that genetic selection can accomplish a multiple of goals simultaneously.

There never was much sense in the “if you want the most milk, you can’t select for type” line—that is a result of obsolete single trait selection concepts.    What has been overlooked is that “index” ranking was really just a continuation of the “single trait” preference of armchair geneticists who could get excited on which bull has the highest (PD Milk) and later the highest (Net Merit).

Single trait selection has been proven to be a failure at sustaining both genetic gains and profitability.    If you wish a sustainable approach to dairy productivity, you need a different, sustainable process for genetic selection, mating and reproductive efficiency.    

Tired of alfalfa weevil? Try higher energy mixed seedings

This will sound pretty simple, because it is.     The majority of insects (like alfalfa weevil) do not like to eat “sweet” plants.    They attack low sugar content plants (like alfalfa).     If you are having trouble with alfalfa weevil, it has two causes: (1) low sulfur soils inhibit the “energy” value of alfalfa, (2) alfalfa even in its optimal state is not that high a “sugar” forage.     The biological solution to scaring away weevil is: plant it with “high energy” grass varieties.    Straight alfalfa is really an obsolete forage concept.

Your cows’genetic encoding is to eat grass.     As we switched her to corn-based diets we had to find the forage that would produce lots of protein to balance, and alfalfa (plus soybean meal) became the focus…  but as costs of corn/soybean culture have risen, the energy superiority of grass (also a protein source) is coming into play.     BUT—you have to select grass genetics just like you select corn and alfalfa, for the total nutrient package they bring.    This is why Byron Seeds offers a different perspective on forages. 

Ants, on the other hand, like sugar.    If you want to tell whether a corn has the sugar content needed to give you more complete fermentation and higher digestibility as a silage, lay fresh cut stalks next to an anthill—and see which corn variety the ants pick first.    In most cases, it will be Masters Choice corn, the independent corn company that won the World Dairy Expo corn superbowl this fall (2009).

Tired of the variables of Euro Red crosses? Try LIC New Zealand sires

Research after research from around the world is beginning to show a consistent message:  Sires from LIC New Zealand out compete any Euro Red breeds tried in crossbreeding trials.     Beyond that, there is a recent study from Switzerland, in which pure “Holstein” (75% New Zealand Friesian x 25% North American Holstein) heifers from Ireland were raised and milked in Switzerland, competing with their native Fleckveih, Montbeliarde and Braunveih cattle.   New Zealand Friesians produced more milk and milk solids yields per acre, and reproductive rates were better.

I visit many herds in which Swedish Red and Montbeliarde sires have been tried, in an attempt to gain on health and reproductive traits (compared to Holstein contemporaries).     While some feel the traits they desired were acquired, the inconsistent milk yields have been disappointing—and in many cases, bad disposition issues increased.    Based on the visual type, I do not see long-term udder traits either.  

I think anyone who has tried crossbreeding needs to consider the LIC New Zealand Friesian option – sires chosen from a larger sampling pool and evaluated both by Genomics and large progeny data sets.

NZ Friesian sires compete and succeed on “Net Merit” directly against the US Holstein base, and their semen is more competitively priced.