Sexed semen

[VanC]

Something popped into my head a while ago and I thought i'd throw it out there for you former or current dairy people or for AI techs like cow pollinator.

Let's say they get the kinks worked out of sexed semen and it catches on in a big way. All of a sudden 80-90% of the calves being born each year are heifers. Do you think this would eventually lower the quality of bulls available for AI since there would be fewer to choose from? Wouldn't it also drastically lower the price of dairy heifers since there would be so many of them?

 

[novaman]

The price of dairy heifers is already down, partly due to sexed semen. However, sexed semen will never catch on big enough to create the scenario you describe on the bull side. I believe the use of sexed semen peaked in 2008 when milk was running over $20 and everybody was pushing to fill the barns. Since that time the use of sexed semen has dropped way off. I don't think we will ever see sexed semen becoming any more popular than it is right now. Also keep in mind that with genomic testing the studs can identify the superior animals at a very young age. They no longer need to run hundreds of young bulls to find the couple that stand out.

For fun let's say every dairy cow gets bred with sexed semen. There is just over 9 million cows in the nation. Now take 10% of that and you've got 900,000 bull calves each year, or there abouts. Not going to run into problems even under ideal conditions.

 

[VanC]

The price of dairy heifers is already down, partly due to sexed semen. However, sexed semen will never catch on big enough to create the scenario you describe on the bull side. I believe the use of sexed semen peaked in 2008 when milk was running over $20 and everybody was pushing to fill the barns. Since that time the use of sexed semen has dropped way off. I don't think we will ever see sexed semen becoming any more popular than it is right now. Also keep in mind that with genomic testing the studs can identify the superior animals at a very young age. They no longer need to run hundreds of young bulls to find the couple that stand out.

For fun let's say every dairy cow gets bred with sexed semen. There is just over 9 million cows in the nation. Now take 10% of that and you've got 900,000 bull calves each year, or there abouts. Not going to run into problems even under ideal conditions.

Well, it was just a thought. What you say makes perfect sense.

 

[cow pollinater]

Novaman nailed it pretty well but I'll add that we have worked out enough kinks that we have a fairly stable product. I don't run accross very many herds that haven't tried it yet that want to so I think it is probably as caught on as it's going to get.
And the bulls that wind up in our catalogs are bred by specific herds with long track records of good mating decisions. If you own high quality registered cows and make a good mating decision, a bull calf is worth just as much as a heifer.
In fact, I know of a few backroom deals where specific bulls were sorted male and used as flush semen on specific cows for the purpose of creating good bulls.