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Crossbreds Herd Performance - 24/04/06

Growing dissatisfaction with the reproductive performance of Holstein Friesian cows in spring block calving herds has sparked enormous interest in crossbreeding. But is the promise of better fertility and lower culling rates through hybrid vigour delivered in practice? Angela Rhodes reports on the latest results from the crossbred dairy herd on the Carmarthenshire College Farm at Gelli Aur.

Over the last few years, many producers on low cost, extended grazing systems have looked at crossbreeding as a way to produce animals better suited to the constraints of a tight calving pattern. Positive reports from an ongoing trial in the US has fuelled interest in blending the high production potential of the Holstein with the better reproductive performance of the Jersey and Scandinavian Red breeds.

Perhaps the best UK example of a fully costed and recorded crossbred herd can be found at Gelli Aur near LLandeilo in South Wales. Owned by Carmarthenshire College, the 172ha farm is managed on a commercial basis and is used as a residential education center and as a resource for the Welsh agricultural industry. The main enterprise at GelliAur is milk production with a milk quota of just over 2.2m litres. At present the farm has three commercially run, self- contained demonstration dairy herds :-

• A high margin /cow system with 100 Holstein Friesians block calving in the autumn and a target production of 7500l.
• A high margin/litre system with 115 Holstein Friesians and Jersey crosses block calving in the spring with a target production 4500

 

Calving for the high margin/litre herd starts on 1 February and cows are usually turned out by day around 10 February. “The cows are initially fed silage at night and this year were supplemented with citrus pulp through out of parlour feeders to a maximum xkg/cow/day for x days,” comments farm manager John Owen. The cows go out completely when farm grass cover reaches 2200kg DM/ha. There are no specific forage areas selected as the aim is to graze the whole farm, but fields are shut up for silage as necessary from the second rotation onwards to maintain grass quality and control supply.

An extensive network of tracks not only allows an early turnout but also means Mr Owen has confidence to keep grazing into the autumn with the last rotation starting in mid-October.  “The cows are condition scored three months before drying off and the thinnest will be dried off and housed first with the aim of having the herd completely dry before Christmas,” he explains.

The spring calving herd was set up in 2001 with pedigree Holstein Friesians but around 50% of the herd are now Jersey crosses. “We decided to introduce Jersey bloodlines because we were concerned about the fertility problems and the cull rates in the herd,” explains Mr Owen. A team of three New Zealand Jersey sires is used each year with the most recent line-up consisting of ? ? ?. “We have gone for New Zealand proven sires because they have been tested on a grass based system and the main selection criteria are Breeding Worth which is an overall composite index as well as milk quality and fertility,” he comments.

As with all crossbreeding projects the main question is what do you do with the first crosses?  At Gelli Aur the initial plan was to use British Frisian on the Jersian. But the results from the Californian crossbreeding trials has prompted Mr Owen to use Scandinavian Red bulls as part of a three way crossing program with less extreme Holstein Friesians as the third cross. “The Scandinavian Reds were particularly interesting because they attach a lot of emphasis to health and fertility traits and are also easy calving,” he explains. This year he has used (Bulls names)

With a tight 12 week calving period fertility is a major issue. “We serve everything to AI for the first six weeks to produce replacements and then AI for four weeks to Hereford and Welsh Black sires before sweeping up for two weeks with up to five of our best young  crossbred bulls,” explains Mr Owen. “We rear all the beef bulls on the unit and it is less expensive and better for biosecurity than hiring in bulls.”

All the herds at Gelli Aur are monitored and costed by Kingshay and in the last year the spring calving herd achieved a conception rate to all services of 62% and had a 100 day in calf rate of 60%. Overall the herd is maintaining a 271day calving interval. While it is easy to manipulate the interval by selling out barreners, the actual forced cull rate for fertility is just over 10%. Last year the herd had an overall culling rate of just 19% and of these a third were selected culls for age while the majority of the forced culls went because of lameness. “the autumn calving herd had a comparable cull rate but the cows have more chances to get in calf with an xx week serving period, says Mr Owen. In the spring calving herd only 3% of the crossbreds went as barreners while 13 % of the Holstein Friesians were empty at the end of the serving period.

The downside of running a low input spring calving herd is that you inevitably have lower output and a lower milk price. In the case of the herd at Gelli Aur the seasonality deduction is offset by better milk quality which Mr Owen calculates is worth an extra 1.5ppl over the base price. In addition the lower cull rates of the crossbred herd has allowed him to increase cow numbers from homebred replacements. The smaller crossbred cows can also be stocked more tightly and this extra 0.5LSU/ha also offsets the lower ouput/cow of the spring calving herd. This increased stocking rate keeps the herd on its target 15,000l milk/ha and on last years figures this was worth an extra £35 in profit/ha.

 Overall the herd returned a profit of 1.3ppl compared to just 0.1ppl for the autumn calvers. It is unfair to draw too many direct comparisons between the two systems as the autumn calving herd is still to reach its target yield of 9000l, as run efficiently both can return a profit,” says Mr Owen. In a spring calving situation where fertility and performance of grazed grass are the key to profitability, however, then the crossbreds appear to have the edge, physically and financially.

Just a quick query Would you expect the labour and machinery to be lower with a spring herd? Is this because the costs are spread evenly over all three herds at Gelli Aur?.

Annual Performance summary for spring and autumn calving herds at Gelli Aur in 2004 (Source Kingshay Dairy Manager)

	High Margin/litre	High Margin/cow
Cows in herd	115	102
Stocking rate	2.66	2.44
Total milk production	594,069	848,697
Yield/cow litres	5177	8300
Yield from all forage/cow	4349	1638
Yield from grazed forage/cow	3997	1217
Milk price	16.39	17.75
Concentrate use/cow (kg)	420	2589
Concentrate price/t (£)	108	121
All purchased feed cost/cow (ppl)	1.0	4.6
Culling rate	20%	19%
Replacement rate	21%	33%
Net Herd replacement cost (ppl)	1.2	1.2
Total Output	16.2	17.4
Total Variable costs	5.3	8.9
Overhead Costs (ppl)
Total Labour and Machinery	6.5	6.1
Total fixed costs	1.1	0.8
Rent, finance & quota	2.0	1.5
PROFIT (ppl)	1.3	0.1
Total costs incl net replacement costs plus calf income	15.1	17.6