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 dairy industry noise to
get you the insights that actually matter for
your operation. I am your analytical lead. And
I am your practical farmer perspective. And today,
we are diving deep into a feature piece about
functional profitability. Or, as I like to call
it, why the cow's winning ribbons might be the
exact ones draining your bank account. We're
definitely going to ruffle some feathers today
with this deep dive. We are digging into a massive
piece of research, the million cow proof for
functional profitability. And this isn't just
theory. Right. It involves hard data from Dr.
Jeffrey Buehle at Holstein Association USA and
the absolute legacy of Ed Bosses. at Bosdale
Farms. I really love this topic. It is, you know,
it's one of those things we talk about at the
coffee shop but rarely see put down on paper
with this kind of actual mathematical ricker.
Exactly. But before we get into the nitty gritty
of why my favorite show cow might be a liability,
let's set the stage for the listener. Why are
we talking about this right now? Why does this
specific study matter to you, the dairy farmer,
right now? It is the economy, frankly. You know
the numbers better than anyone. You feel it every
single time you write a check. I do. Look, I
was just crunching the USDA data on replacement
prices before we hopped on the mic today. And
we have to talk about the sheer sticker shock
out there. Yeah. If you rewind the clock to,
say, October 2023, you could pick up. a decent
replacement heifer for around $1 ,990, basically
two grand. Which even then felt like a fair chunk
of change. It really did. But you fast forward
to July 2025. That same heifer, and maybe even
of lesser genetic quality, depending on where
you are buying her, is costing you $3 ,010? That
is a massive jump. That is not just standard
inflation. That is a fundamental shift in the
market structure of the dairy industry. It is
a 164 % increase from the lows we saw back in
2019. I mean, I remember 2019. You could barely
give heifers away. Right. The market was flooded.
Exactly. Now, you are paying a massive premium
just to get a heartbeat in the parlor. So when
you are paying three grand just to get a heifer
to the point where she can even start paying
you back, the margin for error is gone. Totally
gone. You cannot afford to have her wash out
in the first lactation because she is too frail
to handle concrete or she just can't get bread
back. Exactly. With input costs where they are,
and we haven't even touched on feed or labor
or interest rates, the era of trophy genetics
is officially dead. I'm going to call it right
now. Breeding cows just because they look pretty
in a photo or because they might catch a judge's
eye at the county fair. That is a luxury hobby
now. Farmers literally cannot afford to pay rent
on those cows anymore. And the stakes are so
high. We aren't talking about saving a few pennies
on semen straws here. We're talking about a difference
of $2 ,678 per cow in lifetime revenue. That
number stops you right in your tracks. It does.
That is not pocket change. For a lot of guys.
That is a new tractor payment. That is a significant
chunk of a robotic milk release. Or honestly,
that is just the difference between staying in
business for the next generation or selling the
quota and calling it quits. We're going to challenge
the holy grail of the show ring today. You're
going to talk about why dairy character, that
trait we've been told to worship for decades,
is often just a fancy word for frail. And we're
going to dissect why your utter composite score,
that number you probably circle in the bull catalog
immediately, is lying to your face. Oh boy, the
classifiers aren't going to like this deep dive.
I can already hear the angry emails being typed
up. But let's get into it. This all starts with
a specific benchmark. Start us off with Ed Boss.
Who is he and why is his philosophy the anchor
for this entire conversation? So Ed Boss is a
legend up in Cambridge, Ontario. Bosdale Farms.
And to understand Ed, you have to understand
the era he operated in. For 50 years, five whole
decades, he was watching the industry chase a
very specific look. The 80s and 90s especially,
we were completely obsessed with height. Obsessed.
We wanted tall, sharp, angular cows that looked
like giraffes. We wanted a clean bone. We wanted
necks that went on forever. And while everyone
else was chasing that aesthetic, Ed kept his
head down. He completely ignored the industry
trend. It is incredibly hard to do that. The
peer pressure in this industry is immense. You
want to walk into the barn with your neighbor
and have them say, wow, look at the style on
that two year old. You want that validation.
Ignoring that takes a serious backbone. It does.
But Ed focused exclusively on functional traits.
He was looking at udders, feet, legs and rumps.
He didn't care about stature. In fact, he arguably
penalized it if it came at the cost of functionality.
He didn't care about that clean bone look if
it meant the cow was weak or narrow. And the
assumption, usually, is that if you ignore the
style traits, you end up with a barn full of
ugly functional cows. Commercial cows, in the
derogatory sense of the word. Did he end up with
a barn full of ugly cows? Far from it. That is
the irony here. He ended up with 415 excellent
classified Holsteins and three master breeder
shields. Three master breeder shields. You definitely
don't get those by accident. No, you don't. He
proved that you don't need to follow the fad
to get the tight points. A great cow is a great
cow. But more importantly, and this is exactly
why we are talking about him today, he was vindicated
by the data. Dr. Jeffrey Buehle's team at Holstein
Association USA decided to run the numbers. And
they didn't just look at a few hundred cows,
they looked at over one million cows. A million
cows. That is a sample size you simply cannot
argue with. You can argue with a study of 50
cows in a university research barn. You can't
argue with a million actual records. Exactly.
And here's the kicker. Buley admits he went into
this entirely skeptical. He thought confirmation
was soft data. He's a numbers guy. He thought
type was just for the show jockeys and that genomics
and production data were the only things that
really drove profit. He thought type was just
vanity. Right. But the data absolutely shocked
him. They compared the top quartile of cows,
those scoring 82 to 89 points, which is the good
plus, to very good range against the bottom quartile,
those scoring 76 and below. The fair and poor
cows, the ones you usually don't talk about.
The ones you hide out back when visitors come.
And the difference was staggering. The top quartile
cows, the ones with the functional type, gave
13 ,389 pounds more lifetime energy corrected
milk. Wait, let's pause on that. 13 ,000 pounds.
That is half a lactation for some herds. That
is a massive amount of fluid milk. It is. And
it wasn't because they milked harder per day
necessarily. It was because they lasted. They
stayed in the herd 142 more days on average.
That is nearly five extra months of production
compared to the low type cows. So let me get
this straight. We aren't saying type in the sense
of winning at Madison is profitable. We are saying
functional type, the actual physical machinery
that keeps the cow working is profitable. Correct.
That equates to roughly $2 ,678 more gross revenue.
But, and this is the big caveat, the traits that
kept them in the herd weren't the ones that win
grand champion banners. It wasn't stature. It
wasn't extreme angularity. It was udders and
feet. Okay, but play devil's advocate with me
here. I am a farmer. I am looking at a Sire catalog
right now. I buy bulls with high udder composite
or UDC because I want good udders. That is just
common sense. If I see a bull with plus 2 .50
UDC, I assume I am getting great udders. Are
you telling me I am wrong? I am telling you that
you might be falling into what we call the stature
trap. The stature trap. I feel like I've walked
right into this one before. Make it make sense
for the guy driving the chopper right now. Here
is the math problem that does not fit on the
breed association poster. There is a roughly
50 % genetic correlation between stature and
utter composite. Wait, explain that. What does
a 50 % correlation actually look like in the
real world? It means the formula for calculating
utter composite is heavily, heavily weighted
by how tall the cow is. If a little is plus three
for stature, his UDC is mathematically inflated.
The formula essentially says, well, she's tall,
so her utter must be good. So it is a bias. It
is a built -in bias in the math itself. It is.
You aren't necessarily getting better attachments.
You aren't necessarily getting a stronger suspensory
ligament or better key placement. You are getting
taller daughters. And the Index Awards points
for that height, disguising it as udder quality.
That explains so much. I have literally stood
in my barn looking at two -year -olds from high
UDC balls, scratching my head. They are sky -high,
literal giants, but the udders are just average.
Or worse, they are deep. And I am thinking the
catalog promised me a 2 .5 udder. Exactly. You
bought the height and the udder score just rode
along for free. Nate Zwald from Alta Genetics
demonstrated this beautifully a few years ago.
He showed three hypothetical sires to a room
full of breeders. I love these hypothetical scenarios.
It really clears the fog. So you have sire A.
Sire A is tall. He has good type on paper. Then
you have sire B, who is moderate, and sire C,
who is small. Now, if you hold the actual functional
utter traits constant, so they all have the exact
same actual utter quality, Sire A ranked fourth
on TPI. Just because he was tall. Purely because
the stature boosted his composite scores. Sire
B, the moderate one, he ranked 100th. And Sire
C, the small bull with the exact same utter,
he ranked 1 ,000th. That is insane. So I am paying
a premium for the fourth -ranked bull, probably
paying $40 or $50 a straw thinking I'm getting
world -class udders, but I am actually just buying
altitude. You are buying expensive air. Swald
put it perfectly. He said it shouldn't take a
tall cow to have a good udder. But the index
makes it look like it does. And this leads to
what the researchers call floor -hugging udders.
Floor -hugging. That sounds descriptive and not
in a good way. It is not. Think about it. If
you breed a tall cow... She has a deeper body
cavity. She inevitably gets deeper. If you couple
that with the trend for deep rear rib and capacity,
you end up with udders that hang much lower relative
to the hock, even if the attachments are okay.
Deep bodies and deep udders are major culling
risks. Because they get stepped on. Because they
get mastitis. Yeah. Because they drag in the
mud. Exactly. And it is not just U .S. data either.
We aren't just picking on American Holsteins
today. Studies from Brazil by Kern, South Africa
by Satati, Hungary by Turok, they all found the
exact same thing. The deadliest combination you
can have in a dairy cow is extreme angularity
plus a low rear udder. Which is exactly what
we used to breed for. Open rib, dairyness, sweep
to the rib. We wanted them to look like they
were working hard. We wanted that sharpness.
And that brings us perfectly... Use the word
lie. I like it. We have always been told sharpness
means milk. A thick cow is a lazy cow, right?
That is what my grandfather told me. That is
what the judge says when he places the class.
She's cleaner cut. She's more dairy. Your grandfather
was breeding in a totally different era, with
different feed and entirely different management
systems. Today, dairy character is often just
a euphemism for lack of constitution. DeCho and
his team showed a negative 0 .73 genetic correlation
between body condition score and dairy form.
Negative 0 .73. Break that down. In the world
of genetics, that is practically a lock, isn't
it? It is a seesaw. Think of it like a seesaw
on a playground. If you push the dairy form side
up, making them sharper, more angular, more refined,
the body condition side blindly crashes down.
You cannot have both. You are genetically programming
that cow to be fin. So she is genetically wired
to strip the fat right off her back? Yes. She
cannot hold flesh. So she calves in. She has
that massive energy demand for milk production.
She burns all her fat reserves in the first 60
days. And she crashes. Ketosis. Displaced abomasum.
And then the big one, she doesn't breed back.
Because her body thinks she is starving. Exactly.
Biology takes over. A starving mammal does not
ovulate. So she is open at 150 days. She is open
at 200 days. And then she leaves the herd. And
you are out $3 ,010 for a replacement because
you thought she looked dairy. That hits hard.
We are literally breeding for a metabolic crisis.
We are. And here's a shocking stat from Alcantara's
analysis at the University of Gulf. This is Canadian
data, so it feeds directly into the pro dollar
index. Yeah. They looked at 9 ,351 bulls. They
analyzed which traits actually contributed to
profit. Body depth, which is a show ring, absolute
favorite. We love a deep bodied open root cow
is the single most negative contributor to the
Canadian pro dollar index. Wait, deep body loses
money. It loses money. It is a drag on your profit.
It costs more to maintain that frame size, and
it correlates with frailty. Do you know what
the unsung hero was? The trait that actually
makes money? I'm going to guess it is something
boring. It is always the boring traits. Heel
depth. Heel depth. Of course it is. No one is
standing ringside cheering for a cow's heel depth.
Wow, look at the heel on that one. It is not
sexy at all. But they should be cheering. If
we were smart, we would be giving the championship
ribbons for heels. Heel depth is the most positive
contributor to profitability in that entire study.
Because if a cow has a deep ear, she has a good
foot angle. If she has a good foot angle, she
walks comfortably. If she walks comfortably,
she goes to the bunk and eats. If she eats, she
milks, and she doesn't get lame. It is the foundation.
We are building skyscrapers on swank land when
we ignore feet. So effectively, we are giving
blue ribbons to traits that lose money, like
body depth, and completely ignoring the traits
that keep cows alive, like heel depth. We are
breeding for vanity, not sanity. That is the
bumper sticker for this deep dive. Breeding for
vanity, not sanity. Okay, let's talk money. Because
I am sitting here thinking about my feed bill,
and I am thinking about that $2 ,678 number.
But let's break down the half lactation economics.
What does that mean for the listener? This comes
from Lactinet data. They mapped the lifetime
profit curve. It is a graph every single dairy
farmer should have taped to their office wall.
A cow does not pay back her raising costs, that
$2 ,000 to $3 ,000 investment we talked about
earlier, until she is 40 months old. 40 months.
So she calves at 24 months. She milks for a year.
That puts her at 36 months. Then a dry period.
So we were talking about the middle of her second
lactation. Right. She has to calve a second time
and reach peak milk in her second lactation before
she has generated one single dollar of pure profit
for you. That is the valley of death for cash
flow. It really is. So if you call her at the
end of the first lactation because she is frail
or she has bad feet or she didn't breed back,
you didn't just make zero profit. You literally
lit two grand on fire. You subsidized her life.
You paid for her feed, her bedding, her vaccines,
and you got nothing back but a cold check that
barely covers the trucking. That hurts to hear.
It really does. Because we all have those heifers,
the ones that look great at two years old, but
by the time they're three, they're just gone.
Let's do the bar in math. I want to make this
real for you. Imagine a 300 cow dairy. Pretty
standard family operation. If you can move your
average lactation number from 2 .7, which is
pretty typical, to 3 .2, that is just a half
lactation increase. We aren't asking for miracles
here, just keeping them six months longer. Okay.
Half a lactation. That shift means you need about
17 fewer heifers per year to maintain your herd
size. 17 heifers doesn't sound like a ton until
you actually do the math on it. At $3 ,010 a
head over five years, that is more than $255
,000 in avoided replacement purchases. That is
a quarter of a million dollars just by keeping
them alive six months longer. That feeds a lot
of families. That pays off the milking robot.
That buys the neighbor's land when it comes up
for sale. And that doesn't even count the extra
milk. Because remember, a third lactation cow
gives way more milk than a first lactation heifer.
You get a maturity bonus. A mature cow is a milk
factory. A heifer is still expending energy growing
her own frame. So it is a double whammy. You
save the replacement, cost the actual cash outlay,
and you get higher volume milk in the tank. Why
are we not all doing this? Why is the turnover
rate still so high in the industry? Because we
are addicted to the fresh heifer look. We like
the turnover. We like seeing the genetic progress
on paper. But the pro -dollar analysis confirms
this. Top pro -dollar sires result in 7 .4 %
more daughters surviving to six years compared
to middle -ranked sires. Bottom pro -dollar sires,
6 % fewer survivors. So the genetics actually
work if you pick the right bulls, if you pick
the bulls that prioritize longevity over style.
Exactly. It is all about picking for the right
traits. Let's look at some people who are actually
walking the walk. Because it is easy to sit here
in the studio and talk theory. Who is doing this
right out in the real world? Well. Let's look
at Glenn Klein from Y Run Farms out in Pennsylvania.
He has 1 ,200 cows. He started genomic testing
back in 2011. An early adopter. That was back
when genomics was still the Wild West. Very early.
And he credits that testing with the massive
difference in longevity he sees today. He said
when they expanded and had to buy in outside
cattle to fill the new barn, the difference between
his home -bred genomic herd and the purchased
cattle was night and day. How so? His cows lasted.
The purchased ones didn't. The purchased ones
melted under the pressure. His home -bred cows,
which were bred for specific functional traits,
handled the environment perfectly. That is the
home court advantage of breeding for your own
specific environment. But it's also about the
criteria. If you buy generic cattle, you are
buying someone else's problems or someone else's
breeding goals. What about Eric Rodegett? I know
that name. 3 ,500 cows in Wisconsin, right? Yes.
The 2025 Innovative Dairy Farmer of the Year.
He has a target that I think every listener should
write down right now. He targets a 25 % replacement
rate. 25%. The industry average is usually pushing
35 or 40%. Some guys are at 45 % because they're
using so much sexed semen. They have heifers
coming out of their ears. Exactly. He is totally
bucking the trend. He used to sell cull cows
every single day. The truck was there every day.
Lameness, pneumonia, mastitis, now. He sells
cull cows one day a week. He literally says,
They don't have to go. That is a massive mental
shift. From I have to replace these broken cows
to I have nowhere to put these incoming heifers
because the old girl simply won't leave. That
is a really good problem to have. It is the best
problem to have. It allows you to be highly selective.
You can sell your bottom end heifers for beef
prices or as premium replacements to other guys
and keep only the absolute cream of the crop
for yourself. And then there is Kristen Metcalf
with Glacier Edge Dairy. They milk jerseys. I
love the jerseys. She uses data to rigorously
filter traits. Her philosophy is simple. She
asks, why not leave them as long as the data
is there? It doesn't matter if they are pretty.
It doesn't matter if they have a slightly high
tail head or their udder isn't perfectly level.
It matters if the data says they are profitable.
It is removing the emotion from the equation.
We get so emotional about our cows. Oh, I loved
her mother, or she has such a pretty face, the
spreadsheet does not care about her face. The
spreadsheet only cares about the milk check.
And we cannot ignore the Dutch in this conversation.
Holland has been on this longevity kick for a
very long time. They faced harsh environmental
regulations way before we did, especially on
nitrogen and phosphate limits. I had to be efficient.
They essentially had a strict quota on manure.
Right. CRV stats show that cold cows in Holland
are now averaging 84 ,500 pounds of lifetime
milk and 2 ,255 days of life. They breed specifically
for longevity. They don't care about the height
of the rear udder nearly as much as they care
about whether that udder is still healthy and
functioning at 10 years old. 84 ,000 pounds lifetime
average. That is incredibly impressive. In the
U .S., our average is probably closer to 60 ,000
or 65 ,000 in a lot of herds. That is a massive
efficiency gap. So where is this all going? Are
we seeing a permanent divorce between the show
ring and the commercial barn? The divorce papers
are signed. The show ring and commercial profitability
are officially separating. They're living in
different houses. Just look at the index updates.
The April 2025 net merit revision. What happened
there? They put a negative 11 % penalty on body
weight composite. Ouch. So if you breed a big
cow, the index actively punishes you. Big time.
It is a direct tax on size. And they increased
feed save to nearly 18 % emphasis. The indexes
are finally admitting that big cows are inefficient
cows. They simply eat too much just for daily
maintenance. It is basically the index saying
we do not care how tall she is. We care how much
she eats versus how much she milks. It is basic
thermodynamics. A bigger engine burns more gas
just sitting there idling. Exactly. And this
brings us to the broader breeding philosophy
debate. You have the ed boss approach, using
proven sires, building deep cow families, taking
it slow, versus the modern approach, which is
genomics, speed, and turning generations as fast
as mathematically possible. Fies won't touch
a bull without a daughter proof. That is very
old school. I mean, most of us are using genomics
because we want that genetic gain right now.
We don't want to wait five years to find out
if a bull actually works in the parlor. And both
approaches can work. That is the nuance here.
You don't have to be a Luddite to breed functional
cows. But the consensus, whether you are old
school like Ed or new school, using predictive
analytics, is that the traits you target must
be functional. Heels and udders. Not stature
and style. You can use genomics to find high
heel depth. You can use genomics to find modern
stature. So don't blame the cool. Blame the carpenter.
Exactly. If you use Genomics to select for plus
4 type and plus 3 stature, you are going to get
a barn full of beautiful, frail cows that will
bankrupt you. If you use Genomics to select for
plus five productive life and moderate size,
you will get a barn full of invisible cows that
pay for your retirement. Invisible cows. I really
like that. The ones you never have to treat.
The ones you never notice until you look at the
lifetime production list and see they're sitting
at one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Those
are the true queens of the herd. All right. Let's
get practical here because we have thrown a ton
of data at people today. A farmer just finished
milking. The radio is off and they are. driving
to the feed store right now. They are thinking
about that $3 ,000 heifer price and sweating
a little bit. What are the three things they
need to do right now to stop bleeding money on
pretty cows? Okay, let's break it down into immediate
action, medium -term strategy, and long -term
positioning. Hit me with the immediate action.
This week, I'm sitting at the farm desk tonight.
Step one. Audit your utter composite. Pull your
classification summary or your sire list. Stop
looking at the overall UDC number. Ignore the
big number. That is hard to do. It is literally
bolded in the catalog. Ignore it. Treat it as
a marketing number, not a genetic number. Break
it down into the linear traits. Is the UDC high
because of stature? Or is it high because of
actual utter depth and foreattachment? So I need
to look at the little bar graphs underneath.
Yes. If the bull is plus three stature and plus
2 .5 UDC. I should be worried. Treat that UDC
with extreme suspicion. It is a mirage. You want
the bull that is plus 0 .5 stature or even negative
stature and plus two UDC. That is the real deal.
That is a bull putting good functional udders
on moderate functional frames. Okay, got it.
Step two, medium term. My next semen order is
coming up in about a month. Step two. Set hard
floors. You need non -negotiable minimums on
your semen order. Give me the numbers. What am
I telling the AI rep when he pulls in the driveway?
Productive life greater than three. Positive
utter depth. Positive heel depth. Write those
three down. Even if the bull is the hot new release.
Even if he is the one everyone is talking about
online. Especially if he is the hot new release.
Do not wave these floors. The hype machine is
designed to sell semen. It is not designed to
lower your call rate. But what if I want to sell
some show heifers? What if I just really enjoy
the show ring on the weekends? That is completely
fine. We aren't the fun police here. But cap
your show type matings at 10 to 15 % of your
herd. Treat it like a hobby budget, just like
you have a budget for your boat or your hunting
trip. The rest of the herd needs to be working
girls. They pay the bills so the show cows can
eat. I like that a lot. Hobby budget. Keep the
gambling money separate from the grocery money.
Okay, what about long term? One to two years
out. Step three is the lactation audit. Track
your herd's average lactation number. If you
were at 2 .5 right now, set a strict goal to
get to three. Move the needle by half a lactation.
Exactly. Calculate the savings in replacement
rearing. If you haven't moved that number in
12 months, your breeding criteria are still too
focused on pretty. You are still selecting for
traits that are pushing cows out the door prematurely.
It is basically a scorecard for your entire breeding
program. If the cows aren't getting older, the
breeding isn't getting better. Simple as that.
Longevity is the ultimate proof of functionality.
If they work, they stay. If they don't, they
leave. Well, before we wrap up, I want to leave
you with one final provocative thought to chew
on. We talked about feed efficiency and indexes,
but think about the supply chain. What happens
when the packing plants start actively panelizing
us for these massive cows because their carcasses
literally don't fit on the rail hooks? We are
already hearing whispers of rail height limits
becoming a real issue in slaughterhouses. If
the packers start docking the price of your cull
cows because their frames are too huge, that
vanity breeding is going to hit your wallet a
second time on the way out the door. Just something
to mull over while you evaluate your next sire
lineup. That is a chilling thought, but a very
real possibility. Well, this has been another
deep dive from the Bullvine podcast. We've covered
a lot, but the message is clear. The market has
changed, and our cows need to change with it.
If you are still breeding for tall cows after
listening to this, do not call me when the feed
bill comes due. For more straight -talking industry
analysis, head over to www .thebullvine .com.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We
are out with new deep dives every single day
and upcoming topics will be tackling the truth
about robotic milking data. Stop chasing ribbons
and start chasing profit. See you next time.