Dairy Genetics

In developing an efficient Dairy Beef program, it can be beneficial to consider the genetics of your dairy herd. Looking to the future, we see huge benefits in breeding a robust medium-sized dairy animal capable of dairy production and the ability to produce value-added dairy beef offspring when required.

Anieka Templar

The Templers have used Samen NZ’s Short Gestation Belgian Blue for two years. On top of extra days in milk, the Belgian Blues from Samen always colour mark and look like a Belgian Blue.

They are easy to rear and grow like stink. Anieka comments, “when they are ten days old they are already filling out a lot”. Focusing on the future, the Templers are very excited about using high genetic merit polled sires to reduce/remove dehorning, and dual-purpose breeds are helping remove/reduce bobby calves from their system.

Josh & Phillipa Stainton

We ended up with about 80 of the Short Gestation Belgian Blue calves. We found they are very easy to identify because they all came out with that speckley look. They were very easy to teach to drink and very happy laid back animals, I couldn’t believe how quick they were to learn to drink. You would just show them once and away they would go.

We were after a Short Gestation Beef Breed and we found they were consistently coming through two and

Cameron Shepherd

My calves have an extremely good name in this area, with one of the few Friesian herds in this area. The Fleckvieh are strengthening this and the Short Gestation Belgian Blue are giving me more days in milk and a highly sellable beef calf.

I put around 10% of the herd to the Short Gestation Belgian Blue and while we use them over the bottom end of our herd, I am using it as a bit of a tool to tighten my calving period as well, said Shepherd.