A tool to optimise dairy herd replacements combining conventional, sexed, and beef semen

Abstract

A tool to help Italian dairy farmers choosing the most suitable replacement strategy has been developed. The approach aimed to identify yearly female replacement needs based on herd performance level and combination of different semen type (conventional, sex-sorted, and beef semen), with the ultimate goal of enhancing farm profit. A case study based on a 350-cow Holstein herd was used and three levels of herd fertility (high, medium, and low) were simulated to define the yearly number of dairy female replacements needed and the number of females yielded under different semen utilisation scenario. The number of annual dairy replacements was obtained as the number of cows multiplied by the replacement rate and adjusted by the age at first calving. Number of animals yielded was used to evaluate the replacement cost per 100 L of milk. Then, four strategies of sexed semen utilisation were combined with five strategies of beef semen use. Animals that were not inseminated with sexed or beef semen were bred with conventional semen. Regardless of fertility level, the number of dairy female replacement heifers that the farm needs are 110. Increasing beef semen use allows farmer to yield less replacement heifers. Furthermore, as beef semen use increases and the number of replacement heifers decreases, replacement cost per 100 L of milk reduces. Therefore, our results highlighted that replacement costs increase with increasing number of yielded heifers. Hence, combining beef and sexed semen to reach heifer balance close to zero, decreased the replacement cost.

Graphical Abstract

HIGHLIGHTS

• Yielding more heifers than needed is not the most profitable strategy for farmers.

• Combining sexed-sorted semen with beef semen allow farmers to breed less heifers.

• The developed tool will be implemented into a mating program.

Keywords:

• Heifer
• management
• tool
• crossbreeding
• sexed semen

Ethical approval

This study did not involve animals and thus prior ethical approval was deemed not required.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

None of the data were deposited in an official repository. The data that support the findings presented in this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by “Latteco2 project, sottomisura 10.2 of the National Rural Development Program (PSRN) - Biodiversity 2020–2023” [Ministero dell’agricoltura, della sovranità alimentare e delle foreste (MASAF), D.M. no. 465907 del 24/09/2021, project unique code J12C21004080005].