Breaking free from the chains of the past Where
truth moves faster than a Holstein calf No law
waiting on some printed page We're charting new
ground in the digital age From genomic codes
to robot facts We cut through the noise, no hold
them back not your daddy's dairy news tonight
we're sparking Welcome back to the Bullvine Podcast,
where we cut through the dairy industry noise
to get you the insights that actually matter
for your operation. If you're tired of the fluff,
the PR spins, and the sales pitches, and you
just want the hard truth about where this industry
is going, you are in the right place. And today
we are diving deep into a feature piece titled
Genomic Horizons, Modern Math for Holstein Margins.
And I have to be honest with you, right off the
bat, when I first saw that headline, I thought,
great, another math lesson. Just what I need
after a morning of fixing scrapers. But once
I actually sat down with the data in this piece,
I realized this isn't a math lesson. This is
a wake -up call. It really is. And it's a wake
-up call for anyone, and I mean anyone, who is
still walking their pens, looking at their cows,
and thinking, I like the look of that one. So
she stays. Oh, yeah. The old eye test. Exactly.
We are looking at a fundamental shift here. The
source material recovery today challenges a decades
-old habit that, let's be real, most people in
this industry have. It's that instinct to breed
based on coat color, pattern, or kind. But today
we are going to contrast that, let's call it
a sentimental approach, with the cold hard math
of 2025 and 2026 genomics and economics. And
the timing on this couldn't be better or maybe
worse, depending on how your balance sheet looks
at the moment. But seriously, this matters right
now because the margin for error is shrinking.
We aren't just talking about genetic theory here.
We're talking about cash flow. The days of carrying
a cow because she's a pretty good one are just...
They're over. Let's put some numbers on those
stakes right out of the gate because I don't
want people to think we're just talking about
aesthetics. We have modeling from high ground
dairy referenced in this deep dive showing that
farmers are potentially leaving over $4 US per
hundredweight on the table. Hang on. Stop right
there. $4. $4 per hundredweight. That is a massive
number. I mean, if you tell a producer they can
pick up 50 cents, they're listening. You tell
them $4 and they're going to think you're selling
snake oil. It sounds unbelievable, I know. But
that is the figure attached to optimizing your
herd strategy versus the traditional approach.
It's a huge amount of unrealized revenue. And
on the flip side of that revenue potential is
the cost of the mistake. The source highlights
that raising a heifer today costs between, what,
$1 ,800 and $2 ,500 U .S. dollars? If you're
listening in Canada, you're looking at nearly
$3 ,000 CAD. And that's the number that just
keeps going up. I was looking at my own rearing
costs the other day and between feed, labor,
bedding, vet costs. It is staggering. So if you
are guessing wrong because you like the way a
calf is marked or because she reminds you of
her grandmother, that is an expensive mistake.
You are basically setting fire to two grand before
she even calves. We are also going to get into
a bit of controversy today. We need to tease
this up front. The idea that those white cows
just seem to last longer is a myth. And we aren't
just going to say it's a myth. We're going to
bust it with data. I can hear the coffee shop
grumbling already. There are guys who swear by
their white cows. But we also have to talk about
the elephant in the room, which is the inbreeding
trap. We've chased speed so hard with genomics
that the gene pool is shrinking faster than we
realized. So we have a lot to unpack. Let's get
into it. I want to start with what we call the
coffee shop myth. We all know it. It's practically
a ritual. Oh, absolutely. It's the classic winter
meeting conversation. You're sitting there, maybe
having a donut, looking at a bowl catalog or
scrolling through a sire list. And someone leans
over and says. You know, I just like a cow with
a lot of white on her. They seem to handle the
heat better. They last longer. They clean up
better. Or you get the flip side. I like that
black silky hide. That's my kind of cow. They
milk. It's so deeply ingrained, isn't it? It
is. And look, I'll be the first to admit, as
a farmer, that is how many of us grew up. You
walk the pens and you develop an eye. You look
at color, pattern, and style right alongside
the milk records. It is incredibly hard to break
the habit of trusting your eye because for 100
years, that was the primary tool. You looked
for a kind. You wanted a herd that looked uniform.
But here is where the science comes in to ruin
the party, or save the bank account, depending
on how you look at it. The source material is
explicit on this. The genes that control pigment,
specifically MC1R and COPA, sit on completely
different chromosomes than the genes that drive
milk and fertility. Okay, let's pause there and
really explain that. Because to a layman or even
a busy farmer, genes are just genes. They're
all in the soup together, right? Right. Think
of it this way. Imagine a massive car manufacturing
plant. On one side of the complex, you have the
engine plant. This is where they build the horsepower,
the fuel efficiency, the durability of the motor.
That's your production and fertility traits.
Okay, I'm with you. The important stuff. Now,
imagine that three miles down the road in a completely
separate building is the paint shop. That's where
they decide if the car is red, black, or white.
The guys in the paint shop do not talk to the
guys in the engine plant. They don't send memos
back and forth. Painting a car white doesn't
magically make the engine have more horsepower.
That is a perfect analogy. So when a farmer says,
that white cow milks better, they are essentially
saying this car goes faster because the paint
is white. Exactly. And the source breaks down
the specific geography of the genome to prove
this. The MC1R gene, which controls basic blacker
pigment, is on chromosome 18. The COPA gene,
which is a dominant red gene, is on chromosome
3. And where are the money genes? Where is the
engine being built? The big drivers like DGAT1,
which is a massive gene for yield, fat, and protein,
are hanging out on chromosome 14. They aren't
neighbors. They aren't even in the same zip code.
So these genome -wide association studies, GWAS,
they show these are separate stories. Wait, let
me play devil's advocate here. I know plenty
of herds where a certain cow family has a very
specific look. Maybe they are all mostly white
and they are the best cows in the barn. Are you
telling me that farmer is hallucinating? No,
they aren't hallucinating. They are seeing what
geneticists call a popular sire effect or a haplotype
block. Okay, let's break that down without getting
too bogged down in the jargon. Use a bull. Let's
say a legend like Goldwyn or Shottle back in
the day. He stamps them. They all look a certain
way. And because he was a great bull, they all
milk like crazy. So your brain connects the look
with the milk. You see the pattern and assume
it causes the production. Right. It's correlation,
not causation. Exactly. You're seeing a chunk
of DNA that traveled together from that bowl.
But those blocks break up over time. It's like
a deck of cards being shuffled. Just because
a cow three generations later has the look, the
ace of staves, doesn't mean she has the milk,
the king of hearts. Those cards get separated.
The engine parts might have been swapped out
over three generations, but the paint job remained.
That is a critical distinction. If you are selecting
for the look three generations later, you might
just be selecting for the paint while the engine
has degraded into a lemon. And that leads us
perfectly into the industry reality check. We
need to separate the intuition from the data.
We've established that the genes are separate.
Now let's talk about the speed of change. This
is the other part of the reality check. Since
genomic selection began, the sire generation
interval has dropped off a cliff. It's incredible.
I remember when we used to wait for proofs. It
used to be about seven years. You had to wait
for the bull to grow up, get semen collected,
breed cows, wait for those daughters to be born,
grow up, calve, and milk for a lactation. It
was a slow, methodical grind. Now, the sire generation
interval is down to about two and a half years.
We are using bulls that are basically calves
themselves. And the result of that is that annual
genetic gains for milk, fat, protein, and fertility
have basically doubled compared to the progeny
test era. We are making progress at a velocity
that was impossible 20 years ago. We are moving
twice as fast. But here is my worry, and I think
it's what every farmer listening is thinking.
We're moving fast, sure, but are we moving in
the right direction? Or are we just running faster
toward a cliff? If you're driving a car at 20
miles an hour, you can steer around a pothole.
If you're doing 100, you better have a GPS that
works. Or you're going to crash. That is the
perfect setup for the economic discussion. Because
if you're moving that fast and you are breeding
cows that are this high performance, you better
be profitable. Let's follow the money. Let's
get back to that $4 number. But first, we have
to look at the cost side. Raising a heifer is
not cheap. The source cites a CanFax study out
of Canada that puts the cost at nearly $2 ,900
Canadian. The U .S. budgets are routinely $1
,800 to $2 ,500 U .S. start. And I want to challenge
that number slightly. Not that it's wrong, but
that farmers often underestimate it. They look
at the feed bill and say, oh, it cost me $1 ,200.
Right. They forget the labor. They forget the
bedding. They forget the depreciation on the
heifer facility. And critically, they forget
the opportunity cost. That heifer is taking up
a swat that could be used for something else.
Exactly. So you have this massive investment,
let's call it $2 ,200 U .S., for a nice round
average. That is a lot of capital tied up for
two years with zero return. Compare that to the
cost of a genomic test. A test like Clarified
or similar panels cost what? 35 to 50 bucks?
Around 40 bucks, give or take. So the argument
the source makes, and it's hard to argue with,
is that spending $40 to risk manage a $2 ,200
investment is just common sense. Why would you
guess? Why would you look at a calf and say,
she's mostly black, I like her, when you can
spend $40 and know for a fact if she's going
to pay you back? It's cheap insurance. But the
real margin magic comes from what you do with
the ones you don't keep. This brings us to the
beef on dairy opportunity. This is the game changer
for 2025 and beyond. Talk to me about that high
ground dairy modeling. How do we get to $4 per
hundred weight? Because that sounds like a number
you get by adding everything up in a perfect
world scenario. It is an aggressive number, but
the math holds up. Here is how it breaks down.
Traditionally, you bred everything to Holstein.
You got a heifer calf or a bull calf. The bull
calf was worth five bucks maybe. The heifer calf
you raised. Now look at the new model. You genomically
test. You identify your bottom 20, 30, maybe
even 50 % of the herd. You do not breed them
to Holstein. You breed them to high -value Booth
semen. Now, instead of a $5 Holstein bull calf,
you have a crossbred beef calf that might sell
for $200, $300, sometimes more depending on the
market and the sire. That is immediate cash flow.
That's bucket number one. Bucket number two is
inventory control. You aren't raising surplus
heifers. You are only raising the ones you actually
need. So you aren't spending that $2 ,200 on
a heifer that is just going to be an average
cow. You are saving that cash. Bucket number
three. Bucket number three is the genetic progress
of the herd itself. Because you are only breeding
replacements from your top end, your average
milk production per cow rises faster. More milk,
same number of stalls. So when you stack the
beef calf revenue, the savings on rearing costs,
and the increased milk yield, that is how high
ground dairy is projecting a margin impact of
over $4 per hundredweight. Exactly. And in some
models, they're projecting over $5 per hundredweight.
But, and this is the big but, this revenue stream
is only possible if you aren't raising every
whole skein heifer just because she looks good.
If you are keeping every heifer because she might
be okay or I like her pattern, you don't have
the inventory space to create those beef crossbreds.
You are flooding your own barn with mediocre
replacements instead of creating a high -value
beef calf. So we've established that color doesn't
equal milk. But is there any situation where
color actually does matter? Well, you know I
love to play devil's advocate. And the source
does concede one specific area where color matters.
Physics. Physics. Not biology, not genetics.
Physics. Simple thermodynamics. Dark surfaces
absorb solar radiation. White surfaces reflect
it. It's the difference between wearing a black
t -shirt or a white t -shirt on a hot day in
July. And we have evidence for this from Tanzania
and CSIR studies mentioned in the text. Right.
These studies are fascinating. They looked at
cows in high heat environments. As the temperature
humidity index, or THI, rises, rectal temps go
up. And what they found is that cows with more
black pigment saw their body temperatures rise
faster than the mostly white cows. And when body
temp goes up, milk yield goes down. Exactly.
But the source makes a crucial distinction here.
This is an environmental effect, not genetic
merit. Explain that difference for the listener,
because it sounds like splitting hairs, but it's
vital. It means the cow isn't genetically superior
because she's white. She doesn't have a better
liver or better mammary system. She is just biologically
handling the heat load slightly better because
of the physics of light absorption. She is wearing
a lighter t -shirt. That's it. So practically
speaking, how should a farmer treat this information?
If I'm in Texas, should I be breeding for white
cows? Well, it depends on your environment. If
you are in a high sun, dry lot environment, California,
Texas, maybe parts of Southern Europe, color
matters. Dark cows will hit heat stress sooner.
But is breeding for white the answer? The source
says no. Right. The source says. Don't change
your genetics. Change your environment. The answer
is shade. The answer is fans. The answer is sprinklers.
You don't breed for a white coat to solve a heat
problem. You build a shade structure. Because
if you breed for white but ignore the index,
you get a white cow that stays cool, but she
doesn't milk. You've bred a very comfortable,
unprofitable lawn ornament. Exactly. And for
our listeners in moderate or indoor climates,
Wisconsin, Ontario, Northern Europe, where the
cows are inside. 90 % of the time. Ventilation
trumps coat color every time. Precisely. If your
cows are inside, the sun isn't hitting them,
so the color of the hide is irrelevant compared
to air exchange and fan capacity. Okay, so we've
busted the color myth, we've looked at the money,
now let's look at the dark side of this genomic
revolution. Segment 5. Future implications and
the inbreeding trap. This is the part that keeps
geneticists up at night. We talked about how
fast we are moving generation intervals dropping
to two and a half years. Well, when you move
that fast, you tend to use the same supersires
over and over. Everyone wants the top bull. The
source mentions a specific term, runs of homozygosity,
or ROH. Yeah, ROH. Imagine your DNA is a zipper.
If the DNA you get from your mom is identical
to the DNA you get from your dad for a long stretch,
the zipper is closed. That's a run of homozygosity.
It means you have zero genetic variation in that
stretch. And why is that bad? Because variation
is the toolbox the cow uses to fix problems.
If she has two different copies of a gene, she
has options. If she has two identical copies
and those copies happen to be defective or weak,
she has no backup plan. And the data is startling.
A North American Holstein study from 1990 to
2016 showed ROH segments went from about 57 per
animal to 82. That is a massive jump. And the
rate of inbreeding doubled per calendar year
once genomics kicked in. Because we are turning
generations over so fast, we are stacking that
inbreeding up quicker than ever before. We are
closing the zipper tighter and tighter. What
are the consequences of this? Is it just a number
on a page? No, it has real -world effects. Italian
data links higher genomic inbreeding to reduced
stayability. Stayability, that's a great term.
It measures how long a cow stays in the herd.
The data shows that highly inbred cows burn out.
They don't have the resilience. Maybe they get
sick and don't bounce back as fast. Maybe they
have subtle fertility issues. They just fail.
So the question becomes, are we breeding ourselves
into a corner? In a way, yes. If we aren't careful,
we are building Ferraris, but we might be using
fragile parts. So what is the fix? We can't go
back to 1990. No, we can't. The solution is what
they call optimal contribution mating. It sounds
fancy, but it basically means... Stop just looking
at the pedigree names. Look at the genomic relationship
matrix. So don't just ask, is the sire her dad?
Ask, how much actual DNA do they share? Exactly.
Because of the way DNA recombines, a cow might
share 50 % of her DNA with her sire, or maybe
slightly more or less, depending on the shuffle.
You need to look at the molecular level. And
practically, for the farmer listening, it means
use a team of bulls. Don't put all your eggs
in the basket of the one it bull of the year.
Use a team. Spread the risk. This brings us to
a bit of a contrarian take to wrap up the discussion.
If genomics is doing all the heavy lifting, selecting
the heifers, predicting the milk, managing the
inbreeding, does the stockman's eye matter at
all anymore? Yeah. Are we just data entry clerks?
This is the emotional part of the discussion.
And the answer is a resounding yes, the eye matters,
but the role has changed. Think about it. In
the old days, the eye was the selector. You stood
in the pen and pointed, breed her, cull her.
You were the judge, jury, and executioner based
on visual appraisal. And now. Now the eye is
the manager. I love that distinction. Genomics
cannot see a cow limping. Genomics cannot see
that a heifer is being bullied at the feed bunk
and isn't getting enough grain. Genomics cannot
tell you that a cow is having a rough transition
and looks depressed. So the farmer needs to use
their eye to spot early lameness, transition
issues, barn usage. Exactly. There is a great
anecdote in the source about a producer who realized
his eye is now his best management tool while
the DNA handles the investment decisions. He
stopped trying to outguess the computer on potential
and started using his skills to help the cows
realize that potential. That is a powerful shift
in mindset. It's not about surrendering your
skill. It's about applying it where it has the
highest return. Precisely. You aren't being replaced
by a test tube. You are being freed up to be
a better cow manager. The DNA picks the team.
You coach them. All right, we have covered a
ton of ground. We've looked at the biology, the
economics, the physics of heat, and the genetics
of inbreeding. But we always like to leave our
listeners with something they can actually do.
If a farmer is driving to the feed store right
now, what are the three things they need to take
away from this? Okay, let's break it down. We
need an immediate plan, a medium -term plan,
and a long -term plan. Let's start with takeaway
number one, the one -year audit. This is for
this week. This is a low -risk challenge. I want
you to run a learn -from -your -data trial. Commit
to testing every single heifer calf for 12 months.
Just do it. But here's the twist, and this is
crucial. Don't change your decisions yet. Right.
Keep doing what you do. Make your visual calls.
Go into the pen, look at the calves, and write
down, I like this one, I don't like that one.
Put it in a notebook. Then at the end of the
year, compare your notes to the DNA results.
See where your eye lied to you. Takeaway number
two. Pick your compass. This is for the next
three to six months. Stop trying to look at 50
different traits. Stop looking at type and feet
and legs and milk and somatic cell count individually.
Pick one economic index. Net merit, crow dollars,
LPI, CM dollars, whatever fits your milk market.
And then? Rank your heifers high to low. Print
the list and be strict. The top tier say the
top 50 % get sexed Holstein. You want daughters
from them. The middle tier, maybe conventional
semen if you need the pregnancies. And the bottom
tier, the problem cows. Beef semen. Why is this
ranking so critical? This directly impacts that
heifer rearing cost versus... beef revenue balance
we talked about. This is how you unlock that
$4 per hundred weight margin. You stop creating
low value dairy heifers and start creating high
value beef crosses. You have to be ruthless with
the bottom end of the herd. And finally, takeaway
number three, the inbreeding guardrail. This
is the long -term play one to two years out.
This is a conversation you need to have with
your AI rep or your mating service. Next time
they sit down at your kitchen table, don't just
look at the bull proofs, ask a specific question.
What is the question? Show me the genomic inbreeding
risk for this mating, not just the pedigree.
Make them show you the data. Yes. The goal is
to keep your inbreeding curves from getting too
steep. You want to protect the adaptability and
health traits for your herd in 2030. If you just
chase the highest index number blindly without
checking the inbreeding, you are building a fragile
cow. You are building a car with a massive engine
but a cracked chassis. Stop guessing. Start testing.
That's the mantra. It's not about romance anymore.
It's about math. But it's math that keeps you
in business so you can keep loving the cows.
Because you can't love them if you're bankrupt.
Well said. This has been a deep dive into genomic
horizons. We hope this shakes up your thinking
a bit next time you're looking at a pen of heifers.
And remember, straight talking analysis is what
we do. This has been another Bullvine podcast
from The Bullvine. For more of this kind of no
BS industry analysis, you know where to go. www
.thebullvine .com. Subscribe wherever you get
podcasts. We are out with new episodes every
day. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you
on the next deep dive. Stay profitable, everyone.