Protecting genetics during drought

As the dry season continues to bite, some serious thinking needs to be done to decide which breeding stock to keep and what are the options for the others.

Beef producers have already made and acted in recent months to sell off the nonpregnant cows, any older stock, or those with health issues.

East Gippsland has a challenging climate; however, producers have developed robust cattle genetics suitable to the climate that need to be preserved for the future.

So, what are the options to protect the genetics for when the drought breaks?

A potential option is to keep a small core number of elite breeders on the farm and feeding these elite animals depending the cost and availability of feed.

What are the options of the rest of the herd? There are other districts in the state that have received winter rainfall such as the south west of the state and parts of south and West Gippsland and are expecting a spring this year, so agistment may be sort in these other districts.

The availability of this agistment is unknown, it may be expensive and incurs transport costs plus maintaining the biosecurity of your herd needs to be considered.

Another option would be the lease out a portion of the herd for a 12-month period to a young farmer who is wanting to establish a superior genetic herd based on your breeding principles and proven genetics.

Therefore, the lessee would transport the herd to their farm, manage the herd, adequately feed the cows, calve the cows down, manage the re-mating or AI program, maintain the herd in a predetermined condition score and return the cows at the end of the 12 months pre-calving.

This is a bit out there and may or may not have a financial transaction attached but the main thing is you have preserved your herds genetics and saved the feed costs for the next 12 months.

The advantage to lessor of the herd would be retaining the calves born on their property and reared to weaning.

The advantage for the herd owner is you get your cattle fed, managed and returned 12 months later.

A written agreement would need to be established between both parties, including cow deaths, vet costs, bull or Artificial Insemination (AI) costs, biosecurity and transport costs and cow condition scores.

A stock agent or agricultural consulting firm could be engaged to locate a suitable young cattle breeder and broker the agreement on your behalf.

Another option is to flush embryos from some elite cows in the herd and freeze the embryos until next season when there is plenty of feed and place the embryos into recipient cows of lower genetic merit in spring 2019.

There are several embryo transplant (ET) / breeding contractors who have mobile laboratory trucks able to travel to your farm.

Contractors are able to flush your donor cows, freeze embryos on the farm for storage or place embryos into recipient cows on the day or the following year.

Local cattle veterinarians can supply and administer the pre-treatments in preparation for embryo flushing and the pre-treatments for embryo transplant process, therefore the ET contractors only travel to your farm for the actual flushing and ET tasks.

Having the cattle healthy and on good nutrition is essential for a successful embryo transplant program. Embryo collection and implanting costs vary between ET/ breeding contractors and you can flush multiple embryo from a small number of elite cows.

Some basic cost estimates are pre-flushing treatments for preparing cows $250, embryo flushing $75 per donor cow, embryo storage $45 plus annual storage fee of $4 and transferring embryos to recipient cows is approximately $100.

These values are a guide only so please seek your own costings direct from a ET/breeding contractor for your specific case and numbers.

The cost per cow varies with the number required so maybe worth talking to fellow cattle breeders in your area and co-ordinate a collective joint embryo program thus sharing costs and making it more worthwhile for the ET/breeding contractor.

If you are considering reducing your herd numbers further and want to select the best genetic merit heifers and young cows to retain in the herd then using estimated breeding values and 50k Single Nuceleotide Polymorphisms (SNP’s) a common depxurobonucleic acid (DNA) evaluation method maybe useful tools.

The major cattle breed societies and cattle genetic companies offer a service for genomic merit testing, for example if you had 100 heifers and wanted to know the heifers and young cows with the most likely genetic merit.

The cattle can be blood sampled for laboratory testing (50k SNP) and have the heifers ranked so that you could sell off the lower merit individuals.

At around $50 per sample it sounds expensive, but feed costs would be saved, and the long term superior animals would be retained on the farm for future breeding. Another way to protect your genetics would be to collect semen from your herd sire for storage until a later date.

These maybe extreme ideas, but if you have elite breeding animals and want to protect the genetics or to multiply your breeding herd numbers post drought then it’s worth thinking outside the square.