For far too long the dairy industry has neglected to capture and transmit to a central data base calf and heifer data. It is time to do a full-scope analysis of what is needed for the genetic improvement of calves and heifers. The result will be dairy farmers with calves and heifers that will positively contribute to long-lived productive trouble-free cows and profitable dairy herds.

Setting the Scene – The Cost

Herd replacement costs range from 15-20% of total herd costs. Every dairy worker knows that a sick calf can take an exorbitant amount of time. Is that calf sick because of genetics, nutrition or environment? Calves and heifers are important when it comes to herd profitability. And currently, we know only a limited amount genetically when it comes to the best calves and heifers.

Even More Perspective – Time is Money

Currently, the average number of lactations per cow in the North American herds is about 2.8 lactations. This means that the time prior to first calving equates to 45% of a female’s lifetime. When and if the average was 4.0 lactations for an average milking cow’s productive life it would be 32% of time spent pre first calving. If knowing more about heifer genetic merit for additional traits would add even half a lactation to a cow’s lifetime – that would be significant.

Heifers – A Cost or An Investment?

Most often when reporting on calves and heifers, the number provided is the cost to first calving. Currently the cost is estimated to be $2,200 (US) to $2,400 (US).

Yet costs are only a part of the financial equation. Important, but seldom mentioned, is that calves and heifers are an investment. Maximizing heifer ROI in today’s dairy economy is a must do.

The question becomes what can be done in next 2-5 of years in capturing and analyzing heifer data to maximize their ROI?

Current Heifer Genetic Indexes Are A Good Start

For some time now breeders have had genetic indexes on some traits that affect calves and heifers including: (sire) calving ease; daughter calving ease; sire stillbirths; daughter stillbirths; and genetic defects/haploids. These have been developed due to the need to primarily to avoid the death of calves are the time of birth. Recently CDCB has added a trait called EFC (early first calving). Yet these do not address the heifer rearing challenges associated with growth rate, feed conversion efficiency, health, immunity and morbidity.

Although the heritability for these traits is quite low, considerable progress has been made from when the majority of Holsteins could be a problem calving for the first time.  Results included the possibility of a dead calf or a calf that was a ‘poor doer’ that did not reach its genetic potential. Sire calving ease (CE & CA) has received the primary attention. Even though daughter calving ease (DCE & DCA) has been reported it is unfortunate that it has not been given more attention in sire selection. Hard first calvings can severely hold back first calvers from achieving peak production and in quick breeding back.

Breeders have available to them sire rankings for calf related health indexes calculated and published by Zoetis. Table 1 reports the top proven Holstein sires for: overall calf health (CW$); calf respiratory problems (C RESP); calf scour problems (C SCOURS) and calf livability (C LIV). There are many genomically evaluated sires that have even higher indexes for CW$.

Table 1 – Highest Ranked US Proven Holsteins Sires for CW* (Dec ’19)

Notes: * Date Source – www.holstein.com; ** 100 is the average rating for sires.

The Immunity Plus program (Semex) reports that the sires, designated as Immunity+, show 4-8% superiority for many heifer and cow performance limiting health related diseases.

Other Young Stock Genetic Indexes

The Angus Breed has an extensive program that capture data and produces genetic indexes for growth (birth, weaning and yearling), feed conversion, fertility, carcass, functional conformation, health, and temperament. It has been a key factor in Angus having an excellent branding program.

As early as the 1960’s, Norway was performance testing all dairy bulls, entering its young sire sampling programs, for growth, fertility, health and hoof growth.  The young sires were initially selected based on the parents’ milk production ability but only the top half of the sires based on their own performance had semen collected and were sampled to determine their daughters’ performance.  This screening continues in the present day in Viking Genetics cattle improvement programs.

A recent study in New Zealand reported on the benefits of high fertility male and female lines compared to low fertility lines. High fertility lines reached heifer puberty 21 days earlier and 55 lbs. lighter than low fertility lines. High fertility line females in first and second lactations had 30% more pregnancies six weeks after first breeding than low fertility lines. This research supports the moves by many A.I. not to return to proven service low fertility sires even though their total merit indexes may be high.

New Traits for Calves and Heifers

The potential list is long. Every dairy farmer will have 1 to 3 performance traits they wish to improve in their calves and heifers. Which traits would add to the profitability of your herd? Calves that resist disease? Calves that grow faster? Calves with more functional feet? Heifers that have their first heat at a younger age?

It would be beneficial if young A.I. sires could also be evaluated before semen is sold for their own ability to grow and resist disease. Genomic indexing will be important when adding new heifer traits. Almost every A.I. company is working on some trait to genetically improve calves and heifers.

New Technology Will Provide Usable data

Currently there are automated calf feeding devices that have considerable information for calves from birth to weaning. We can expect to have many new monitoring devices, cameras and management softwares in use on-farm in the near future. There will be data that will have significant benefit for management at the farm level and improvement in the industry. The data for new traits will need to be uniformly defined and it needs to get to the central data system.

Organizations Must Act

The way forward will require data captured on-farm, the data transmitted to the national data bases and then analyzed and reported for benchmarking and genetic advancement purposes. If this process is not part of the national system, then the calf and heifer data systems will be taken on by breeding companies in order to support their services and products.

Animal improvement organizations are procrastinating in moving this matter forward. Why is that? This inaction should not continue.

The Bullvine Bottom Line

The dairy cattle improvement industry must expand the focus from primarily the milking herd to all animals covering from birth to removal from the herd. And as the dairy herd expands to be a larger portion of the meat production industry, the data needs to be more than just milk production focused.

Breeders, milk producers and industry organizations need to insist that the matter of monitoring and sharing of calf and heifer data be given a much higher priority in research and development.

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Recently I overheard two milk producers discussing a proven sire’s daughters in their herds. One producer praised the sire for his ability to raise fat yield while the other producer put down the sire because of the extra time it took his staff to treat sick calves, the need to pull the calves from the sire’s first calf heifers and that it took 3-4 services to get the sire’s daughter pregnant.

That conversation got me thinking – “Do we put enough emphasis in sire selection on the amount of staff time that a sire’s daughters may require?”

Attitude to Labor Required

In the past breeders were pleased to obtain superior production and/or conformation from a sire’s daughters and were prepared to overlook the extra labor required for a sire’s daughters.

With the increased cost for labor and the often lack of availability of skilled herdspersons to treat sick, underperforming, infertile or special needs animals, labor utilization is often front and center on a herd manager’s work agenda.

Genetics and Labor Meet

The Bullvine asks – “Is it time to address how the genetic merit of our dairy animals affects the cost of labor on the farms of tomorrow?”

Farm financial analysis shows that labor is between 14-20% of total farm costs. Reducing labor costs by 15-20% by having animals of all ages and stages that require less staff and management time could significantly impact net income, while freeing up staff time to implement enhanced procedures.

Traits the Affect Labor Required

The thirty-five traits with genetic indexes that can affect labor costs is significant and apply from birth to herd removal follow:

Direct Affect:

1. Animal Health: All animal health issues on dairy farms require the attention and time of staff.

Genetic indexes include: C Scours; C Resp; C Liv; CW$; Immunity+; SCS/MAS/MR; LIV; WT$; …

2. Reproduction: For some time now, dairy breeders have selected for improved reproductive performance, but it remains a high priority as it requires considerable staff time.

Genetic indexes include: DPR/FI/DF; HCC; CCR; MET; …

3. Calving Time: Calving time issues can be stressful and can require an excessive amount of staff time. It continues to be a priority item for improvement on dairy farms.

Genetic indexes include: CE/CA; MCE/DCA; SSB; DSB; RP/RPL; GL; …

4. Milking Time: Regardless of the degree of on-farm automations the milking process requires staff time at every milking. Factors that slow down milking time of individual or groups of cows is a staff cost.

Genetic indexes include: MSP(Milking Speed); MT(Milking Temperament); RTP(Holsteins); UD(Udder Depth); …

5. Animal Locomotion: An animal’s ability to move without problems is an absolute necessity. Dealing with locomotion problems requires extra labor. Any genetic indexes currently available are at best an indirect measure of animal locomotion.

Genetic indexes include: HH(Hoof Health); FA(Foot Angle); HD(Heel Depth); LAME; …

6. Metabolic Disease: When a metabolic disease occurs, extra staff is required to detect and treat.

Genetic indexes include: DA(Displace Abomasum); KET(Ketosis); MVF; MD(Metabolic Disease Composite – 3x); …

Indirect Affect

Some genetic related traits may have an indirect affect on the cost for labor. These include: PL/HL (reduced labor for replacements); PP (no dehorning); AFC (Age at First Calving – reduce labor for replacements); Sexed Semen (easier calving); Cross Breeding (correction of breed limiting traits).

Necessary to Apply Selection Pressure

Dairy cattle breeders know that to improve the genetic level of their herds, they must use superior sires. To improve quickly the sires must be significantly superior.  Significantly superior sires are the ones that are in the top 5% of the breed. In statistical terms those sires are two standard deviations above average.

The traits mentioned above, the contributors to saving on labor costs are lowly heritable, not easily measured and often only identified later in an animal’s life. All of which contribute to the need for stringent sire selection in order to make herd improvement.

In Canada, CDN/Lactanet expresses traits on a scale of 100 being average, one standard deviation is 5 so two standard deviations (top 5%) is 110.

In the USA, at CDCB and with many company’s proprietary labor-saving traits, there is not a standardized method of trait expression, average is not always zero (0.0) and the standard deviation value is not published. It is difficult, if not impossible, for a milk producer to quickly know the superiority or inferiority of a sire’s rating for those traits.

No matter the source of the information, milk producers planning to improve a labor-saving trait must make sure that only truly superior sires are used.

Some Top Sires for Saving on Labor

To assist Bullvine readers to start the process of finding labor saving sires the following sires are offered:

• AltaTopShot (11HO11779) – SCS 2.67/MR 107; PL 7.4/HL 108; DPR 1.6 / DF 106; SCE 5.9% / DCA 109; DSB 3.7%; HH 108; MD 107; LIV 2.7; UD 0.0; MSP 97; #10 CW$, #50 WT$(#1 DWP$; #1NM$; #2 TPI; A2A2)
• Exactly (7HO12721) – MR 111/ SCS 2.50; DF 111/ DPR 2.9; HL 109 / PL 4.5; DCA 107 / DCE 5.2%; MD 105; HH 105; DSB 4.5%; LIV -0.9; MT 103; MSP 101; UD 3.41 (GLPI 3399; Pro$ 2097; TPI 2438; NM$ 563, A2A2)
• VJ Tir (JEDNK303616) – SCS 2.68/MR 109; DPR 4.6/DF 111; PL 6.1/HL 115; MSP 104; UD 1S (#3CM$; A2A2)
• Vivaldi (200JE07756) – DF 106 / DPR -1.9; MD 104; MR 103 / SCS 3.00; MSP 103; HL 101 / PL 2.0; CA 108; DCA 100; MT 117; UD 2D/+1.30                                                   (#1 Pro$; #1 LPI; JPI 143; CM$ 547; A2A2)

Very noteworthy is the fact that, with 70% of A.I. services to genomic sires, milk producers can choose from many many genomic sires that have high indexes for labor-saving traits. 

Facts that the Bullvine Observed

In developing this article on genetics and labor-saving traits the author observed:

• North American total merit indexes (NM$, Pro$, CM$, TPU, LPI, …) are frequently not labor-saving trait friendly. This could be because these indexes are developed from historic breeding objectives rather than for the future reality.
• Locomotion and functional feet are not well defined in genetic terms. More research is needed.
• The methods of expressing traits with respect to breed averages and levels of superiority are not easily understood or known to milk producers.
• Work needs to continue on trait definitions as more and more labor-saving traits will be captured by electronic on-farm systems. Common trait interpretation is need when data is combined when conducting genetic evaluations or when benchmarking herd performance.

Bonuses from Improving Labor Saving Traits

The bonus for dairy farmers for improving labor-saving traits will be in time saved primarily by eliminating doing the unnecessary. More time will be available to attend to other important on-farm herd functions – fresh cow temperature checking; extra health checks of calves; increased heat checking; more time for report analysis; more time for staff training; …

The Bullvine Bottom Line

With more animals per employee and the focus moving to on-farm efficiency, it is imperative that milk producers choose and use sires that are significant breed improvers for labor-saving traits.

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Suicide in the agriculture community is an unfortunate reality and is an issue farm families have to be concerned about. It’s time to end the stigma.  Let’s start by ending the silence.

“What are We Talking About?”

As dairy farmers, we spend the majority of our time working and when we do get to socialize in person, in our communities or online, it sometimes is easier to talk about the current price of milk than it is to bring up mental health issues.  I don’t personally know Jessica Peters but I want to give her heartfelt thanks for sending out her thoughts about mental health in agriculture. She was interviewed by Hoard’s Dairymen and can be found on facebook/com/sprucerow.  Thank you Jessica for calling us to action, “It is time to speak up.”

“There is A Global Gathering Place Online”

Online, the Twitter hashtag #DoMoreAg serves as a global gathering place for struggling farmers to reach out for support.  Politicians, industry leaders and mental-health advocates credit farmers opening up on the platform for pushing this crisis and its severity into the spotlight. Farmers talking, asking and listening is bringing attention to the problem of suicide.

“Depression is Not a Choice or a Shortcoming”

We find that our dairy family and friends are impacted by this difficult issue. The first place to start is by correcting misinformation.

• Nobody is immune to mental health issues, either young or old.
• Mental health issues are not just a phase. They are not a choice.
• Mental health issues do not define a person.

Intervention is definitely needed if someone becomes suicidal. Before that crisis time,

training in social problem solving skills, creating a sense of belonging, and providing social support could reduce the likelihood that someone will attempt suicide.

“Take This One Action”

Rural communities and individual farmers find it hard to reach out when faced with this topic. One suggestion is to set up a local farm meeting simply to acknowledge how everyone is doing.  There is no need for speakers and formal presenters.  Simply provide some time for people to talk to each other. Sharing in a safe place we can admit that we all face challenges.  We all need support and encouragement.

“We Have to Rethink Support Programs”

There are many negative triggers in life and whether you carry the burden of one or of many, you can be assured that there is assistance. In the farm community, the expressed reasons are – debt, alcohol addiction, environment, low produce prices, stress and family responsibilities, apathy, poor irrigation, increased cost of cultivation, private money lenders, use of chemical fertilizers and crop failure. Supporting someone means having an understanding of the causes. It means understanding the possible impacts and the kinds of information that is needed. 

“Information.  Too Much.  Wrong Kind.  Too Little”

It is often the stated goal of any industry forum, magazine or editorial to inspire discussion and to be an impetus for action. This works well when discussing measureable outcomes with visible parameters.  Breeding charts, feeding strategies or effective storage solutions respond to this type of open analysis. However, when it comes to health issues and, specifically mental health issues, the topic can have repercussions. It is natural to feel uncomfortable with difficult conversations about mental illness and suicide.  However, completely avoiding acknowledgement of the topic might lead to community pushback and suspicion, while too much of the wrong kind of information could be as counterproductive.

“If you think you may attempt suicide, get help now.”

• Call 911 or your local emergency number immediately.
• Call a suicide hotline number.
• In the U.S., call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255) anytime of day.
• Use that same number and press “1” to reach the Veterans Crisis Line.

“We Have to Learn how to Ask for and How to Give Support.”

That was the opening to a recent conversation with a farming friend. As more and more negativity piles on our already overloaded senses, we feel less able to cope. In an effort not to hurt or burden others, we retreat into ourselves becoming more and more isolated.

Depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues can be very isolating.

“You Don’t Have to Suffer Silently. It’s Okay to Ask for Help”

Getting people to talk about a subject that tends to be taboo and about which many hold mistaken and prejudiced ideas will help the dairy ag community to learn about the risk factors so that they can identify and learn to address them. Here are some signals to be aware of:

• Withdrawing from social contact and wanting to be left alone
• Increasing use of alcohol or illicit drugs
• Changing normal routines, including eating or sleeping patterns
• Doing risky or self-destructive things, such as using drugs or driving recklessly 

“Don’t Ignore the Warning Signs.” 

Warning signs aren’t always obvious, and they may vary from person to person. If you begin to see negative changes in your behavior or in someone else, they are signs stating to the world that something is wrong:

• Talking about suicide — for example, making statements such as “I wish I were dead” or “I wish I hadn’t been born”.
• Feeling trapped or hopeless about a situation
• Preoccupation with death, dying or violence
• Having mood swings, such as being emotionally high one day and deeply discouraged the next.

“Find Out Who to Get in Touch with RIGHT NOW.”

Suicidal thinking doesn’t get better on its own.  If you’re feeling on the edge, but are not immediately thinking of hurting yourself:

• Reach out to a close friend or loved one.
• Contact a minister, spiritual leader or someone in your faith community
• Call a suicide hotline
• Make an appointment with your doctor, other health care provider or a mental health
• If you find it too hard to list these numbers for yourself, ask a friend or family member to help you with this task. 

“When to See a Doctor for Depression”

Sharing your feelings with trusted family or friends may help in the short term. When more help is needed, don’t give up. Doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists can provide treatments and self management strategies beyond what those close to you can do. This is a proactive step but there could be issues! It takes courage to reach out but in today’s health community the current waiting list might be quite lengthy.  Here is an added burden for people who are already finding it hard to cope. The ag industry and healthcare at large needs to be more adequately prepared to meet the mental health needs of the community. Depression can make a person feel completely helpless.  Their energy becomes so drained that they haven’t enough left to ask for help.  When you are worried about a friend or loved one, offer support by encouraging them to speak to a health professional. If they’re not able to do it on their own, ask for their permission to ask on their behalf. 

“Take Care of Your Body and Mind.”

One of the ways we identify with those who are struggling is for the reason that we recognize the ways everybody tries to manage our mental health.  Here are four ways to offer help.

• Encourage the person that you are worried about to get enough sleep. Although they may feel that working 24/7 is a way to avoid facing root causes, in actual fact, it may worsen the problem.
• Be aware of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)which most often occurs in response to the onset of the shorter days and colder weather of winter, known as winter-onset SAD.
• We all need to exercise regularly, although it may seem redundant to hard working farmers.Exercise that loosens and relaxes muscles counteracts the buildup of tension and helps both mind and body.
• Time and worry steal attention from self care. Be sure to regularly eat healthy foods. 

“Do You Need More Help?”

• Jessica Peters – You can find her on Facebook at Spruce Row Dairy or on Instagram at @seejessfarm. She talks from the heart and from personal experience.
• For a list of mental health resources across the province of Ontario, 
• Living is a Solution. Suicide is Not! Dr. Sournya Naik 
• SUICIDE PREVENTION, Ruth Benson, IASP
• Fact Sheets on Suicide, Centre for Suicide prevention,

“Plan Postvention to Provide Support, Intervention and Assistance”

Postvention refers to a series of activities undertaken within the community to respond to a death, suicide or other public crisis with the intention of

• facilitating the grieving;
• helping with the adjustment process;
• stabilizing the environment;
• reducing the risk of negative behaviors;
• limiting the the risk of further suicides through contagion.

All efforts need to work simultaneously to get the community back to the pre-crisis level of functioning, while developing new skills for dealing with new or repeated challenges in the future. 

THE BULLVINE BOTTOM LINE

Assuming a connection between weakness and depression makes it difficult for people with this form of illness to ask for the help they need.  The agricultural and dairy community must break down the stigma around mental illness. Far from being a sign of weakness, living with and recovering from depression takes a lot of personal strength. You are not alone.  The goal is to help yourself and others to come out on the other side with a more constructive, productive and effective way to face mental pain.

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