Gerard and Kate Lynch have always had one eye on where overseas markets are heading and what it may mean for their own dairy and beef operations. Farming dry stock and dairy 20km north-west of Whanganui, they enjoy the business’s flexibility, being able to supply Friesian bulls from their dairy herd to their own bull operation. But Gerard has also been well aware of the impending pressure to eliminate bobby calves from the dairy system, with Fonterra requiring all non-replacement calves to enter a value stream from June 2023 onwards.
Having an all-Friesian dairy herd has meant they had already been able to keep bobby numbers down, supplying the bull beef unit and their own replacements left a minimal number of bobbies.
“But the last three to four seasons we looked at ways to reduce that bobby count even further and discussed with Totally Vets how we would achieve that.”
They decided to adopt a heifer synchronising programme using CIDRs, on advice from Barny Askin, mating the heifers with easy calving Angus semen.
A planned synchronised programme enabled them to use higher conceiving fresh semen over frozen, and to be able to get heifers calving ahead of the main milking mob.
Initially the programme was not without its challenges, determining the best Angus semen to use to deliver an easy calving, low birthweight calves.
“The low-birth-weight indices proved a bit subjective. So, after getting the services of a geneticist and doing a literature review, we found that short gestation index has a very good correlation to lower birthweights, and easy calving.” Tuning up the following year’s programme they focused on that index when selecting the bulls from WaiGroup Angus’s Glanworth stud.
Last season out of the 169 heifers mated, 142 heifers calved in the first six weeks from the CIDR treatment, with a 4% final empty rate.
“So out of the 570 cows we are down to about 60 bobbies, essentially the female calves not born as replacements, later and naturally mated. The use of the CIDRs cut our bobby numbers down by 110 overnight.”
Gerard is careful to point out the CIDRs in themselves are not a silver bullet. Having the heifers in good condition is a priority – he has complete control over the heifers on their separate grazing unit and ensures they are well grown prior to mating to optimise the mating outcome.
There are also some significant management benefits from using a blanket heifer CIDR programme with and short gestation genetics.
“We find the heifers calve 7-10 days before the main herd, so we have time to introduce them to the rotary platform without too much stress, and to get their calves well into the rearing system ahead of the main mob.” He sells the Angus-Friesian calves from the heifers as weaners.
Always keen to stay ahead of emerging market trends, Gerard and Kate’s programme is likely to set the tone for other farmers by next season as the bobby regulations change.
“We are keeping an eye on what is happening in the EU, where no bobby calves can be processed at four days old, sooner or later we are going to have to be the same.”
