TotalDairy Conference 2024 attendees will take a deep dive into the merits of good breeding strategies when it comes to building dairy business resilience, under the guidance of one of the world’s top geneticists.
Breeding forms the foundation of all herds so it’s vital to ‘get it right’ – both from an economic and environmental perspective. “Good genetics put producers on the front foot,” says Teagasc’s geneticist Donagh Berry.
“If a cow has poor fertility in her DNA, that’s going to be expensive – if not impossible – to manage. If her fertility genetics are good, but she’s struggling with reproductive performance, it can be possible to manage her out of that.”
Producers have worked hard to improve fertility through breeding during the past decade or so, and ‘put right’ industrywide issues that were having a significant impact on herd productivity, efficiency and profitability.
“As a result of breeding for better fertility, many herds are back on track with reproductive performance. And this success has underlined that other issues can also be solved by selective breeding such as feed efficiency, which can be related to cow size, or udder health,” says Mr Berry.
Cow health is also on many producers’ ‘wish list’ when selecting sires. “If we want higher genetic-merit animals to express their potential through many lactations, they need to have staying power, and that means good health. Poor health can result in the genetic potential – and investment in better genetics and herd management – being wasted. So a focus on breeding for better cow health – be that udder, feet and legs or bTB resistance – is the obvious next step.
“Producers want to breed cows and heifers that can tick all the boxes, whatever the herd system or setup. They’re looking for resilience and not just for the cows – but for their businesses. Economic and environmental sustainability are equally important.
Carbon footprint
“Managing a herd of healthy, long-life cows is one thing. But the business also needs to make money and reduce its carbon footprint if it’s to survive and thrive.
“There is a future for dairy, despite critics blaming ruminants for emissions, and we need them to utilise the grass that grows in abundance in the UK and Ireland, and in other temperate climates. It’s a balance, and we can achieve this by breeding and managing more efficient cows in systems with a reduced carbon footprint,” says Mr Berry.
Part of this is undoubtedly achieved through improved feed conversion efficiency (FCE). “But my presentations and workshop sessions will start with herd and system management. If a heifer only stays in the herd for one lactation, due to management issues, she could be the most ‘genetically efficient’ animal in the herd, but overall she’s extremely inefficient.
“If we’re going to breed these genetically-superior cattle then we have to have the facility, skills, expertise and systems to manage them well.”
Mr Berry will also look at the practical use of genomics in dairy breeding and production, and how it takes some of the guesswork out of selecting the best females in the herd and making improved breeding decisions.
“Cattle breeding is like betting on horses – it’s a gamble, but there are technologies, like genomics, that improve the odds.” His workshop on using DNA (genomic testing) in breeding and management, will take a wider look at other benefits of the technology, including confirming parentage, traceability, preventing calving difficulties and inbreeding, and being able to detect early chromosomal abnormalities.
Genomic testing
His other workshop will tackle an area that producers and herd managers can struggle with – managing and using all the data generated by genomic testing and digital technologies. “It’s great that we have access to all this information about individual cows and heifers. But it can be overwhelming. So I’ll share more about a system that’s been set up in Ireland to tackle this issue. It automatically pulls all the genomic and management data together and presents it to producers in an easy-to-access and understandable format that they and their advisers can use on farm.
“The tech goes beyond just breeding decisions and matching cows and heifers to the best sires. It impacts and improves herd management too – at an individual cow level. Where collars are used for heat detection, for example if a cow has a genetic disposition not to express heat particularly well, her individual activity threshold can be set lower.
“There are so many uses for this tech. We had a vision of where we wanted to go and we were bullish about getting there. It was the only way to do it, and I’m looking forward to sharing more about our journey – and how it can support herds and producers – in November.”
Speaker biography
Donagh Berry is a geneticists and has worked with Teagasc, in Ireland, for more than 20 years. He holds professorships at universities in the UK and South Africa. He is also director of a large agri-tech research centre, based at Moorepark in Ireland, which has more than 230 staff. He’s a beef and sheep producer and, after studying agriculture at University College Dublin, he completed a PhD in quantitative genetics in a collaboration between Teagasc, Wageningen University and University College Dublin. His research interests are in breeding-goal development, genetic evaluations, and genomic predictions.
Donagh Berry’s sessions
Presentations (followed by Q&A sessions)
● Breeding for improved feed and environmental efficiency
● The genetics of dairy health and fertility
Workshops (interactive sessions with questions throughout)
● Breeding-based decision support tools
● DNA in animal breeding and management
For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit www. totaldairy.com/tickets. Keep an eye on social media and TotalDairy Conference’s website for more speaker announcements, or sign up to the event’s mailing list to stay up to date with the latest conference news. For more information visit: www.totaldairy.com.
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