Beef over dairy is the fastest-growing decision on a New Zealand dairy farm — and most of it gets made in about three seconds, standing behind a cow at mating.
George Dodson sits down with Ben Watson, co-founder of GENEZ and a dairy farmer of close to thirty years, to work out what putting beef over your dairy cows actually does to the bottom line. Conan's away this week, so producer Andy Rowe takes the second chair.
They get into why the beef decision drives genetic gain in your replacement heifers, how GENEZ picks a different sire for week one than week six, what calving ease really means next to birth weight, and why a 40kg calf can still come out easy.
Then the money. A bobby calf gets you thirty or forty dollars. Contracted beef calves are running one fifty to one eighty in the South Island — both sexes, the whole of spring. But Ben won't call it free money: every kilo of calf birth weight costs the cow around 0.67 of a milk solid, which is $6.70 a kilo on a $10 payout.
Also in this one: what a "marker" calf is and why it has to be obvious at three in the morning, the $118 difference in rearing cost between the slowest and fastest bull in the catalogue, and the 156kg weaner that turned up the week after Show Week.
GENEZ: @
Dairy's good — how good? Let's find out.
Chapters
00:00 INTRO
00:32 "Ben, how good's dairy?"
00:51 Conan's away — Andy fills in
01:23 Where GENEZ started
03:07 Why put beef over your dairy cows
04:21 Picking the right sire, week by week
06:14 Calving ease, birth weight and gestation
10:16 What the calf rearer actually wants
11:37 The $118 gap between two bulls
12:58 Why the smaller calf can win
15:10 "Who's dropped the ball here?"
16:23 Wearables, beef price and the perfect storm
18:01 What a marker is
20:05 Why you don't use Angus at AB
22:11 The bottom line — $30 bobby vs $180 beef calf
26:08 Contracts, scale and a 156kg weaner
28:10 What that beef calf costs the cow
30:52 Bridging the gap — markers, then SGL
32:34 Coming up — George's beef mating plan
33:20 Where to find GENEZ
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