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.
If you are tuning in, you know the drill. This
is the No BS Zone for Dairy Analysis. That's
right. We aren't here to sell you semen. We aren't
here to push the latest feed additive. And we
are certainly not here to tell you that everything
in the industry is sunshine and rainbows just
to make you feel good. We are here to cut through
the noise, and there is a lot of noise out there
right now, to get you the insights that actually
matter for your operation. And that's the keyword,
matter. We are talking about the bottom line.
I'm not interested in which bull won the beauty
contest at the Royal, and frankly, I don't think
you are either. No. I want to know what's going
to keep a farm profitable when milk prices are
all over the map and input costs just keep climbing.
We're always looking for that practical angle,
what actually moves the needle on the profit
and loss statement. Exactly. And today we are
doing a deep dive into a feature piece that,
quite frankly, kept me up a little bit last night.
We were talking about genetic blind spots. It's
a heavy topic and it sounds a bit, I don't know,
a bit abstract, doesn't it? Genetic blind spots.
It does. It sounds like something a professor
talks about in a lecture hall. But what we're
going to find out today is that this concept
has a... a direct line to your bank account.
A very direct line. And look, we all love the
progress we've seen. We love the high components,
the production records. It is 2026 after all.
The cows we have today are just, they're biological
marvels compared to 20 years ago. Oh, absolutely.
But this article brings up a concept that is
a bit terrifying. The premise is that while everyone
is obsessing over the net merit rankings, you
know, scrolling through that top 100 list on
their phone, looking for the highest number.
There is a hidden tax being levied on herds that
nobody is talking about. A hidden tax is a, that's
a polite way of putting it. It feels more like
a hole in the bucket. A massive hole. Because
the data suggests this tax might be wiping out
almost 100 % of the genetic gains farmers think
they are making. So you think you're moving forward?
You think you're moving forward because your
milk check is bigger, but your wallet might be
staying in exactly the same place because that
money is just leaking out the back door. And
that's the controversy right there, because like
you said, it is 2026. We have tools now that
we didn't dream of 20 years ago. The pace of
genetic acceleration is faster than ever. So
how can we be moving this fast and still be standing
still? That's the engine problem. Genomic selection
is the engine. It's roaring. It has doubled genetic
progress in terms of, you know, raw. production,
we are getting milk out of cows that our grandfathers
wouldn't have believed possible. But the core
argument we're looking at today is that every
engine, no matter how fast or advanced, has a
blind spot. And if you're driving at 100 miles
an hour, a blind spot is lethal. And we need
to be clear about the stakes here. This isn't
just about pretty cows or type traits or, you
know, whether the rump angle is perfect. No,
not at all. This is about the fundamental biological
profitability of the herd. We are breeding for
more milk faster. That's the gas pedal. But are
we accidentally breeding for cows that can't
get pregnant or cows that drop dead the moment
the thermometer hits 80 degrees? That's the tension.
That is the entire tension. Yeah. We're going
to get into some numbers that are going to make
some people uncomfortable. We're going to talk
about something called the inbreeding bill. The
inbreeding. Yes. The math suggests that for some
herds inbreeding depression is costing as much
money as that extra milk is bringing in. I have
to admit, when I first read that headline that
inbreeding is wiping out the profit gains, my
initial reaction was skepticism. Sure. It sounds
like fear mongering. You know, the sky is falling.
The gene pool is too small. We're all doomed.
I hear that a lot from people who just want to
sell crossbreeding. So I'm going into this with
my guard up. Good. I want to see the proof. I
want to see the dollars and cents. And that is
exactly what we are going to do. We are going
to prove the numbers. But to understand where
we are going and to understand how we got into
this mess, we have to look at where we came from.
Yeah. We need to go back to a specific moment
in history. A history lesson. You're going to
give us a history lesson. A parable. Let's call
it the parable of Missy. Missy, Westwood HC,
Rudy Missy. I know where this is going. Of course
you do. If you're talking about modern genetics,
I mean, all roads lead back to her eventually.
They do. But I want to set the scene because
context matters here. It's February 2003. We
are in Wisconsin. It's the Wisconsin Holstein
Convention Sweetheart Sale. Now, you've been
to sales in Wisconsin in February. Paint the
picture for us. Oh, it's brutal. The wind just
cuts right through you. You're usually in some
drafty barn or a tent that's trying its best
to stay warm, but it's failing. Miserably. You
can see your breath, the cattle are fluffed up,
looking their best, but everyone in the crowd
is bundled up in Carhartts and heavy coats. It's
serious business. You don't drive through Wisconsin
Blizzard unless you are looking for the next
big thing. Exactly. It's a room full of experienced
breeders. These are guys who know cow families
inside and out. But on this particular day, the
sale is dragging a bit, the energy is low, and
into the ring walks a five -year -old Holstein
cow. And looking back from 2026, she's a legend.
She's absolute royalty. But on that day in 2003,
she was not the star of the show. Not even close.
I've heard stories from guys who were there.
The bidding actually stalled out. The auctioneer
was getting that tired, you know, that frustrated
edge to his voice. We know the one. You know
the tone. Come on, boys. She's worth more than
this. But the crowd was hesitant. Why? What was
the knock on her? What were they seeing? You
have to remember the era. 2003, this was the
reign of the show ring. People wanted tall, long
-necked, super dairy cows. They wanted balanced
rumps. And Missy, well, her rump wasn't entirely
balanced. She was a working cow. She had a high,
wide rear udder, sure. But she wasn't the beauty
queen that the market demanded at the time. She
didn't have that wow factor that makes people
raise their hands. So people were checking their
watches, maybe heading for the coffee stand.
But then, the phone rings at the clerk's desk.
And this is the moment. This is the moment that
changed everything. It's Matt Steiner calling
in from Pine Tree Dairy in Ohio. Now, Matt is
a sharp guy, but here's the kicker. He hadn't
even seen her in person. Buying a cow unseen
in 2003 was a huge gamble. You didn't have the
video quality we have now. You were trusting
the catalog and the numbers. And he's looking
at the paper. Her second lactation was 31 ,880
pounds at 4 .1 % fat and 3 .2 % protein. Which
are respectable numbers, good solids, but not.
Not earth shattering. Not for a sale like that.
No. To everyone else in that room, she was just
another decent cow past her prime. But Matt Steiner
saw something. He bids $8 ,100. $8 ,100, which
for a convention sale isn't a headline -grabbing
price. It's a working cow price. And he got her.
And that gamble paid off in a way that I don't
think even Matt could have predicted. Missy became
a global brood cow. She reshaped the breed for
two decades. The sheer number of sons and grandsons
that trace back to her. I mean, you're talking
super sire, mogul, oak. It is staggering. It's
unbelievable. If you milk Holsteins today, you
are milking Missy genetics, period. There's no
escaping it. It is the ultimate American dream
of dairy breeding. The smart buy that builds
an empire. The underdog cow that takes over the
world. But here is the oops moment. Here's the
part of the story nobody tells when they're selling
you a Missy grandson. The other side of the coin.
Because there is always a cost. The exact same
breeding system that built the Missy empire.
The same focus on production. The same genomic
toolkit that eventually came along and doubled
our genetic gain was doing something else in
the background. While we were celebrating that
milk production and those high components, we
were quietly dragging something else along for
the ride. What exactly were we dragging? According
to the research we are looking at today, while
we were selecting for all that milk, we dragged
198 fertility genes and 67 immunity genes in
the wrong direction for 20 years. Whoa, hang
on. 198 fertility genes in a wrong direction.
Yes. Negative progress. We were actively selecting
for cows that were harder to breed back. How
does that even happen? Because I know dairy farmers.
I know the guys running these breeding programs.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, sits down and says,
you know what I want? I want a cow that takes
five services to settle. Of course not. We want
pregnancy. We want calves. Fertility is profit.
How do you accidentally select for the opposite
of what you want? It's a concept called hitchhiking.
Hitchhiking. OK, break that down for me. Think
of a chromosome like a bus or better yet, a train.
You want the passengers in the front car. Those
are the genes for high milk production, high
fat, high protein. Those are the VIPs. You select
for those. You open the door and you invite those
genes onto the train. OK, I'm with you. We want
the milk genes. But because of how DNA works.
Those genes are physically located next to other
genes on the chromosome. They are neighbors.
They are linked. And in this case, the neighbors
sitting right next to the high milk genes were
bad fertility genes and low immunity genes. So
when we invited the milk genes on board. The
bad fertility genes hitchhiked. They got on the
train for free because they were holding hands
with the milk genes. And here's the crucial part.
In 2003, and even for years after, nobody was
measuring the passengers in the back of the train.
We couldn't see them. We didn't have the genomic
resolution to see them. We were only looking
at the driver's seat. So we are driving the train,
shoveling coal into the engine to get more faster,
faster, faster. And we don't realize the back
cars are filling up with hooligans who are going
to trash the interior. That is the perfect analogy.
We spent 20 years filling the bus with bad fertility
genes. That actually explains so much about the
90s and the early 2000s. I remember those days
vividly. We had these cows, those big ribbed,
high producing cows that milked like crazy. But
you just could not get them bred. Conception
rates tanked across the industry. We blamed everything.
We blamed the nutritionists. We blamed the heat.
We blamed the vaccines. And it turns out. We
did it to ourselves. It wasn't just management.
It wasn't just nutrition. It was genetic. We
bred them to be infertile. But playing devil's
advocate here, we fixed it, right? I mean, look
at daughter pregnancy rate, DPR. Now we recognize
the problem. We added fertility to the index
and the trend line is going up. Cows are getting
pregnant again. We did fix it eventually, but
only after a 20 -year crash. We lost two decades
of fertility progress before we even realized
the bus was full of the wrong passengers. And
that's the entire point of this deep dive. We
aren't here to bash the past. We are asking.
What are we breaking today that we won't notice
for another decade? What is hitchhiking on the
bus right now in 2026? That is the scary question
because the engine is moving faster now. If we
are making a mistake, we're making it at 100
miles per hour instead of 50. Let's talk about
that speed, the engine. Since genomics really
took over, let's say post -2009, the speed of
change is just mind -blowing. It really is. I
was looking at the stats in the source material.
The generation interval, that's the time between
one generation and the next, it dropped from
21 .4 years in 2009 to 13 .5 years by 2015. That
is a 37 % reduction in just six years. In six
years. And the sire of bulls pathway, that collapsed
to under two and a half years. Right. We are
using bulls that are basically babies to breed
the next generation of bulls. We aren't waiting
for them to have milking daughters anymore. Which
is great for speed. If you know exactly where
you're going, getting there faster is good. It's
efficient. Right. And the good news is visible
in the milk check. The source material highlights
this. Milk yield gain jumped from about 50 kilograms
per year to 109 kilograms per year for registered
Holsteins. Okay, let's translate that to the
bulk tank, because kilograms per year is abstract
for a lot of people. Do it. If you take a standard
200 -cow herd, that acceleration, that extra
speed we are getting from genomics, is roughly
$5 ,070 in extra gross milk revenue annually.
That's assuming, you know, a $19 .50 mailbox
price. So on paper, you are $5 ,000 richer every
year just by using modern genetics. That's the
sales pitch. Right. That's the gain. That's the
carrot they dangle in front of you. Use these
bulls. Get more milk. Make more money. But now
we have to talk about the stick. Or maybe the
reality check. Because there is a very unique
study out of the University of Minnesota that
proves just how much biology we broke to get
that money. This is the Waseca herd study, right?
I love this study because it's something you
can't really replicate on a commercial farm.
Exactly. The University of Minnesota researcher
did something nobody else really bothered to
do. Since 1964, they kept a control line. Explain
what that means for the listener, because it
sounds like a science experiment, which it is.
A control line means they have a group of cows
that they never improved. They kept breeding
them like it was 1964. They used semen from bulls
that were popular in the 60s. No modern bulls.
No selection for milk. Just maintaining the old
genetics. So they are basically time travelers.
You can walk into that barn and you have cows
from 1964 standing right next to cows from 2026.
Exactly. And they're in the same barn. They eat
the same TMR. They are milked by the same people.
They have the same bedding. Which eliminates
all the excuses. You can't say, oh, it's the
feed or it's the ventilation or the herdsman
is having a bad day. The environment is identical.
The only variable is the genes. So what happened?
By 2004... That is a massive success story. Huge.
If you told a farmer in 1964 he could get almost
80 % more milk, he'd think you were a wizard.
But, and here's the hitchhiker. Yeah. The modern
cows also lost 30 days in conception time. 30
days. 30 days open. 30 days just lost. That is
massive. Anyone listening knows that days open
is the silent killer of profitability. Every
day a cow is open past her voluntary waiting
period. It's costing you three, four, maybe five
dollars a day in feed and lost opportunity. 30
days is a disaster. And remember, same food,
same barn. The smoking gun is undeniable. It
wasn't nutrition. It was purely genetic. We broke
the reproductive system to get the milk. And
that ties back to the hitchhiking genes. We know
now that we drag those fertility genes down.
But again, playing the optimist here. We fixed
it. We added DPR to the index. So why are we
still working? Because the article argues that
we are doing the exact same thing right now to
a different trait, a trait that is becoming critically
important, perhaps even more important than fertility
in some regions. Which trait is that? Heat tolerance.
Heat tolerance. Now, this is interesting because
I look at my cows in the summer and, yeah, they
get hot. Of course they do. But we have fans.
We have sprinklers. I just put in a new tunnel
ventilation barn. I feel like I'm managing heat
stress pretty well. You think you are? I can
keep the barn at 68 degrees when it's 90 outside
if the wind is right. You are managing the environment.
You are masking the genetics. You are putting
a band -aid on a genetic wound. Okay, unpack
that. How is it a genetic wound? Research by
Mistal and Brito, and these are heavy hitters
in genetics, not guys who just make stuff up,
shows that the THI threshold where cows start
losing milk has dropped significantly. THI being
the temperature humidity index. Basically, how
hot and sticky it feels. Right. 20 years ago,
a cow wouldn't start dropping milk, wouldn't
start showing signs of metabolic stress until
the THI hit 72. Okay. Today, that number is 69.
So my cows are wimpier than they were 20 years
ago. They can't handle the heat as well. Biologically,
yes. They are more fragile. And here is the scary
part, the mechanism behind it. It's a phenomenon
called the metabolic override. That sounds like
a sci -fi term. Metabolic override initiated?
It effectively is. In the old days, you know,
pre -Missy, pre -genomics, if a cow got hot,
what did she do? She stopped eating. She stood
in the shade. She panted. And her milk dropped.
She shut down to save herself. Exactly. She prioritized
survival over production. Her body said, it's
too hot. I need to cool down. Screw the milk.
Right. But the modern cow, we have bred that
off switch out of her. We removed the safety
valve. We did. The modern cow overrides that
protective shutdown. Her genetics are screaming,
make milk so loudly that she ignores the heat.
She keeps milking. She keeps pushing glucose
to the utter, even when her body is overheating.
So she's literally burning herself out. Yes.
The research shows that cows maintaining production
during heat stress peaks have a significantly
increased likelihood of death, not just sickness.
Death. So they literally milk themselves to death.
Effectively. Yeah. They don't have the off switch
anymore. And because we have all these expensive
fans and sprinklers and tunnel barns, we don't
notice it as much. We are propping them up with
infrastructure. We are spending hundreds of thousands
of dollars on fans to keep alive cows that we
bred to be fragile. That's a kick in the teeth.
It really is. We are spending money to fix a
problem we created. And look at the map. Unless
you were in Australia. Almost nobody selects
for heat tolerance. In the U .S., look at the
deep south. Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana.
I was looking at the NAS data the other day.
Those states aren't even tracked monthly anymore
for milk production. The numbers are so low,
they just lump them into other. Because the industry
is gone. Dairy is economically unviable there.
It's the canary in the coal mine. We bred a cow
that can't survive in the south. And as the climate
warms, that line is moving north. Tennessee,
Kentucky, southern Missouri. That is a sobering
thought. If you are seeing 60 plus days above
THI 68 in your area, and that's a lot of the
U .S. now, even up into the Midwest in July and
August, this is a slow motion crash happening
in your herd right now. So we have fertility
that we broke and fixed. We have heat tolerance
that we are currently breaking. But now let's
talk about the money because you said earlier
you wanted to see the bill. You wanted to know
if this was just fear mongering. Right. Show
me the dollars because heat tolerance and blind
spots are concepts. I pay my bills with cash.
Okay. Let's talk about the inbreeding bill. Okay.
Inbreeding is a word that gets thrown around
a lot. Oh, the Holsteins are too inbred. The
gene pool is a puddle. But does it actually cost
me money or is it just something geneticists
worry about? Let's look at the explosion first.
U .S. Holstein inbreeding went from 5 .7 % in
2010 to 15 .2 % in 2020. That is a 168 % jump
in 10 years. And that coincides perfectly with
the genomic era. The engine revved up and the
inbreeding spiked. Exactly. An Italian study
by Ablandi showed that genomic selection more
than doubled the annual inbreeding rate. We are
narrowing the gene pool at record speed because
everyone's using the same top 10 bulls. Okay,
so the number is higher. 15%. So what? Does a
15 % inbred cow milk less than a 5 % inbred cow?
Yes. And she dies sooner. No. And she gets sick
more often. Here is the calculation from the
USDA ARS. This isn't theoretical. This is based
on millions of records. Lay it on me. The rule
of thumb is that each 1 % increase in inbreeding
costs $23 to $23 in lifetime net merit per cow.
$25 per percent. That doesn't sound like much.
It doesn't sound like much until you do the math
on the trend. Let's go back to our hypothetical
200 -cow herd. Let's say your inbreeding has
crept up just 4 % over the last decade. And honestly,
looking at the national average, 4 % is a very
conservative estimate. It's likely much higher
for herds chasing the high numbers. But let's
use 4%. Okay, 4%. Let's say $24. That's about
$96 loss per cow in lifetime profit. Now, spread
that across your herd, depending on your turnover
rate. how fast you cycle cows, you are looking
at a total leak of $4 ,800 to $6 ,400 per year
for that 200 cow herd. Wait a minute. Hang on.
I'm doing the math in my head here. Let's do
a comparison. Earlier, we said the gain from
the extra milf steed, that 109 -kilogram jump,
was worth about $5 ,070 a year for that same
herd. Correct. That's the money coming in the
front door. And now you're telling me the loss
from the inbreeding depression, the health issues,
the fertility failure, the short lives, is $4
,800 to $6 ,400 a year. Bingo. They cancel each
other out. They cancel each other out. So let
me get this straight. We are running the engine
red hot. We are breeding faster than ever. We
are getting more milk than ever. But the profit,
the actual money left over, is leaking out the
back door through vet bills, dead cows, and replacements.
We are running just to stand still. That is the
high cost of genetic blind spots. You are seeing
the milk check go up, so you feel good. But you
aren't seeing the inbreeding bill. because it
doesn't come as a single invoice. Right. I don't
get a bill from the Holstein Association saying
you owe $6 ,000 for inbreeding. Exactly. It comes
as a cow with metritis that costs you $300 to
treat. It comes as a heifer that doesn't breed
back and you have to color. It comes as a cow
that dies of heat stress in August. It's death
by a thousand cuts. You blame the weather, you
blame the feed, but the root cause is the genetic
load you built into the herd. That is. Well,
that's depressing. I'm not going to lie. It makes
you feel like you're on a treadmill. It is reality.
But the good news is, now that we can measure
it, we can manage it, we aren't helpless here.
It requires changing how we look at the sire
catalogs. Right. We have to stop chasing the
shiny object, the highest number on the page.
Let's get into the contrarian takes. Because
looking at the December 2025 evaluations, there
is a trap waiting for farmers. The rankings trap.
22 of the top 30 net merit bulls came from one
program, one breeding program. And I can hear
the farmers right now saying, well, if they're
the best, they're the best. I want the best bulls.
Why should I care if they come from the same
farm? Because best. is relative. If you use them
all, you are creating a massive genetic bottleneck
in your own tank. Those bulls are all related.
They share the same sires, the same maternal
grandsires. If you breed them to each other's
daughters, you are doubling down on that inbreeding
risk we just talked about. You are accelerating
the leak. And this is where the difference between
pedigree and reality comes in, because a lot
of guys look at the pedigree and think they are
safe. This is the technical part, but it's crucial.
We used to calculate inbreeding based on pedigree.
Who is the sire? Who is the dam? On paper, the
pedigree inbreeding average is 0 .07. Looks low.
Safe. But when you look at the genomic inbreeding,
specifically using a tool called runs of homozygosity,
or ROH, the number is 0 .17. It's more than double.
Okay, you lost me at runs of homozygosity. Translate
that into farmer English. Think of a pedigree
like a family tree written in a Bible. He says,
John Begatt, Steve. It assumes that because you're
cousins or siblings, you share exactly a certain
percentage of your DNA. It's an average. It's
a guess. It's a mathematical estimate. But biology
is messy. You might have inherited 20 % of your
DNA from your grandfather, and your brother might
have inherited only 2%, or you might have gotten
the exact same chunk of DNA. Okay. ROH is like
taking a blood test. It doesn't guess. It looks
at the actual DNA strands. It looks for long
stretches where the letters of the DNA are identical
on both chromosomes, the one from the sire and
the one from the dam. It stops guessing and starts
measuring. So the pedigree is the map, but ROH
is the satellite image showing the actual terrain.
Exactly. And the satellite image shows that our
cows are twice as inbred as the map says they
are. So the paper is lying to you. If you are
looking at ROH, you are flying blind. You think
you are breeding an outcross, but genetically...
those animals are far more related than you realize.
This brings us to the David Diamond approach.
We talked about him in the pre -show. David is
a breeder from AG3. Super sharp guy. His philosophy
is consistency over unpredictability. Which sounds
boring. Everyone wants the hot bull, the outlier.
It does sound boring. But his strategy is that
sometimes you pass on the highest component bull,
the one that is plus 0 .20 % fat. to avoid the
crash. You pass on the hot bull if he is frail
or if he brings too much inbreeding load, you
select for balanced functional genetics. He talks
about the power of the second tier. Right. He
doesn't just scan the top 10. He looks at bulls
ranked 20th to 50th. Bulls that maybe give up
50 points of net merit, but have zero holes.
Yeah. Good udders, good feet, positive fertility,
and crucially, an outcrossed pedigree. So you
are trading a little bit of the sprint speed,
that top -end theoretical profit, to ensure you
actually finish the marathon. Exactly. Because
if you win the sprint but your cow dies at age
three, you lost money. I'd rather have a cow
that is ranked 50th but lasts for five lactations
than a cow ranked first that burns out in two.
So we have identified the problem. We have scared
everyone with the math. We have explained the
biology. Now we have to help them fix it. Because
if we just leave it here, people are going to
turn off the podcast and go drink a beer in the
dark. Let's get to the actionable insights. Imagine
a farmer listening to this right now. They just
finished milking. They're driving the pickup
to the fee store. What do they need to do? I've
got three things. Immediate, medium term, and
long term. Let's start with immediate this week.
The diversity audit. What does that look like?
Call your genetics advisor or your AI rep, the
guy who sells you the straws. Ask them for one
specific number, the ROH -based genomic inbreeding
for your herd. not the pedigree I'm breeding.
No. If they give you the pedigree number, tell
them to try again. Specifically ask for ROH.
If that number is trending above 7 % to 8%, you
are in the danger zone. You are in that territory
where the leak is starting to gush. And if the
rep says, oh, we don't track that, or that's
not on the sheet. Then you need to push harder.
Or find a rep who does. Because the data exists.
If they aren't sharing it with you, they're keeping
you in the dark. If you don't know that number
before your next mating run, you're throwing
darts in the dark. Okay, so get the real number.
What's the medium -term strategy? Three to six
months out. This is the heat hedge and the 2025
NM now. Let's talk about the index first. The
2025 net merit revision was a big deal. It rebalanced
17 traits, but the big change was feed efficiency,
FSAV. It now has a 17 .8 % emphasis. That is
huge. That's almost a fifth of the index. It
is. And here is the kicker. If your provider
is still using old weightings, if they are optimizing
for the 2020 formula, you are breeding for a
merchant that doesn't exist anymore. You are
breeding big, inefficient cows when the market
is paying for efficiency. You need to be on the
2025 standard. And the heatage. This goes back
to the metabolic override. If you are in an area
with 60 plus days of heat, THI 68, and be honest
with yourself about that, you need to stop ignoring
it. You might not see heat tolerance on the bull
sheet directly. So what do you look for? You
use proxies. You select for productive life,
PL, livability, LIV, and fertility, DPR. Why
those? Because a cow with high productive life
and high livability is, by definition, a survivor.
She is a cow that doesn't die when it gets hot.
She is a cow that handles stress. You might sacrifice
a little bit of top -end milk, but remember,
the metabolic override. You want a survivor,
not a zombie, that milks until she drocks. Okay,
and finally, the long -term positioning. one
to two years out? Diversify and contribute. Diversify.
Don't load the tank from one source. I don't
care how good the bulls are. I don't care if
they're the top five in the world. If they're
all from the same program, spread your risk.
Use at least three AI organizations. Like an
investment portfolio. You wouldn't put 100 %
of your 401k into one stock, even if that stock
was Apple. Exactly. If that one stock crashes,
if that one bloodline turns out to have a genetic
defect we haven't found yet, like HCD or CVM
back in the day, You are wiped out. Spread the
risk. And the contribute part. Data. We need
data. If you have AMS, robotic milking, if you
have activity monitors, if you have health records,
share that data. Contribute it to the Council
on Dairy Cattle Braiding, CTCB. Why should a
farmer bother? Because that is how we stop the
next hitchhiking gene. The only reason we found
the fertility crash is because we had data. The
only reason we know about heat stress is data.
The only way we find the next problem in five
years instead of 20 years is if we have the numbers.
So don't just be a consumer of genetics. Be a
contributor to the system. That protects your
future. Exactly. This has been intense. We covered
a lot of ground. From Missy and the snowstorm
to the heat stress in Alabama to the math of
inbreeding. It's a complex topic, but if I had
to boil it down to one sentence, fast is good.
We love fast. But durable is better. Durable
is profit. And check your leak. Don't let inbreeding
depression steal the money you worked so hard
to breed for. That is the thought we will leave
you with. Don't let the blind spots empty your
bulk tank. This has been another Bullvine podcast
from The Bullvine. For more straight -talking
industry analysis and to read the full article
we discussed today, head over to www .thebullvine
.com. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
We are out with new episodes every day. Upcoming
topics will be, well, let's just say we are going
to look at why your feed nutritionist might be
lying to you about amino acids. But that's for
next time. I can't wait for that one. That's
going to ruffle some feathers. Until then, keep
your eyes open and check those blind spots. Thanks
for listening.