Beef can offer a variety of solutions for New Zealand dairy farmers.
Now is the time to make sure every straw has a purpose.
If a cow is not being bred to generate high genetic merit replacement heifers for your herd, she needs to gain you more days-in-milk and/or produce a highly saleable beef x dairy calf.
An AB mating plan that strategically combines replacement and non-replacement AB options helps meet the challenges of driving herd improvement, farm sustainability, and farm profitability.
Beef Up Front
In recent years many more herds have adopted a ‘Beef Up Front’ mating strategy.
Increasingly, beef straws are being inseminated to lower BW cows on day one of mating. The result is bigger and earlier calves hitting the saleyards, fetching good prices.
Our beef sires are highly selected, sourced direct from some of New Zealand’s top breeders.
And these sires are backed by data.
Without exception, every bull has been hand-picked for the combination of traits they deliver. They are the total package of traits that improve profitability for the dairy farmer – but also have the growth and carcase merit to make them attractive to beef finishers and processors.
Beef Semen
Our Beef sires are highly selected to produce beef x dairy calves that should be born easily, are vigorous, and saleable. With potentially more of these calves available to the market, and therefore large differences in projected calf value, it’s more important than ever to generate the right dairy beef calf for the market.
Our lineup in the latest Beef Genetics Catalogue has breeds and the bulls backed by relevant data to help you produce the right calves, no matter the beef market you are selling to.
We have ‘beefed up’ the catalogue this year by adding new bulls to our lineup.
The new bulls have solid growth and carcass figures, picked to give farmers a great advantage when either selling calves or keeping stock for later sale/slaughter, while maintaining calving ease.
All bulls in our current catalogue are backed by data from a variety of sources, including genetic evaluations, genomics, MINDA, and the Beef + Lamb NZ Dairy Beef Progeny Test (DPBT.)
Calving Difficulty
When choosing a beef breed/bull for calving difficulty, be sure to keep in mind the size, age, and condition of your cows – as well as their previous calving history. In addition to bull genetics, there are many environmental factors that can influence the performance of dairy x beef calves.
All breeds have straws available in no-choice packs. These packs contain straws from both proven bulls (via the DBPT and MINDA®) and younger, unproven bulls. These younger bulls have been selected on their within-breed genetic merit, and on the recommendation of their breeder.
Homegrown Beef Genetics
Our bull breeders are rising to the dairy beef challenge which includes investing in breeding programmes to shorten gestation length, with an additional focus on calving ease, genomic data, measuring net feed efficiency, and submission of their bulls for progeny test scrutiny.
LIC is proud to catalogue bulls from breeders who have been in the business for decades: Their guidance and intimate knowledge of the breed, and their own breeding programmes, is both valued and trusted.
At LIC we’re excited about the opportunities for dairy beef in New Zealand. Together with our local bull breeders, we continue to invest and innovate for the benefit of both our dairy farmers and for the wider beef sector.
