Finding the right mix

RICE, Minn — Sometimes keeping it simple works, but Brent Czech finds quality with an in-depth crossbreeding program.

“When I heard Dr. Les Hansen discuss crossbreeding in the early 2000s, it resonated with me, and thought, this makes a lot of sense for commercial dairy production,” Czech said.

Czech, his wife, Callie, and his parents, Myron and Debbie Czech, own New Heights Dairy near Rice. Through the past 18 years they have grown their dairy from 850 cows milked in a parlor and housed in a sand-bedded freestall barn to milking across four locations.

In 2006, they purchased the dairy upon Brent’s graduation from the University of Minnesota. This also marks the beginning of their crossbreeding.

When the Czechs started crossbreeding, they were doing a three-way rotational cross of Holstein, Jersey and Montbéliarde, in that order.

“When we were looking at the advancements of the Holstein breed over the last decade, we wanted to figure out a way to incorporate more Holstein into the cross while still capturing the benefits of heterosis,” Czech said.

Heterosis increases the average production of certain traits in the offspring.

The Czechs decided to change the rotation to do just that. For the last five years their rotation has been Holstein, Jersey, Holstein, Montbéliarde and Holstein.

“After going through several scenarios, we thought the cross that we are currently doing would be the best combination of taking advantage of the improvement in the Holstein breed but still making a healthy, high-producing animal targeted for longevity,” Czech said. “The biggest advantages currently would be reduced death loss, better health, as well as improved feed efficiency.”

John Metzger, director of product development at Trans Ova Genetics, said rotational breeding has three key points to consider to produce the best offspring. These include a breeding plan, breed selection and sire and dam selection.

Metzger said breed selection is important to make an operation more profitable.

A breeding plan depends on the farm and what will work best for their operation. Figuring out what rotation to use, what system to implement and whether it’s a rotational crossbreeding program or a perpetual F1 program are some of the questions Metzger said to consider.

“The better you can do the selection on both the male and female side the more improvement and better animals you’ll have,” Metzger said.

Metzger said if the operation has a well-designed crossbreeding program, but they don’t use really good bulls, they are likely to give up almost everything gained.

In the past year the Czechs have switched to using only progeny-proven bulls.

“We have a very specific type of cow we want to develop and by using two to three bulls from each breed, we feel that will create more consistency rather than using a higher number of genomic bulls,” Czech said.

The Czechs want to create cows that will produce a lot of components over a lifetime. To accomplish that, they are selecting for a combination of health traits, combined fat and protein and body size.

Breed complementarity strengthens one animal by having breeds complement each other and masking certain traits that are weaknesses.

“It’s kind of the opposite of inbreeding depression,” Metzger said. “You can combine strengths and weaknesses from breeds.”

When producers do a two-breed rotation they only capture half of the heterosis. This is why some producers switched and started doing three-breed rotations.

“I think you retain much more of the heterosis as you get into it,” Metzger said.

Generally, the first generation, F1 cross, is the most profitable animal because they are combining the strength of two breeds. Through this cross, the animals are also getting 100% heterosis.

“When you look at the breeds, you want to be careful that you’re not giving up too much in genetic merit,” Metzger said. “Some breeds have higher fertility and better health, so you bring that into the mix. Then the heterosis or hybrid vigor gives you an extra bump in survival, health, reproduction and longevity.”

Genetic merit is the animal’s value as a parent and the traits breeders see and measure. When producers cross two animals together the animal has a high heterosis, but if there is a big difference between genetic merit, the heterosis might not give that animal a higher performance of the best breed.

“Our goal is to develop an animal that fits our management system,” Czech said. “How we have done that continues to evolve, whether it is fine-tuning sire selection or evaluating the genetic potential of each breed. What was the best fit in the past isn’t always the proper path going forward, and what works for one dairy might not be right for another.”

Metzger said there are many factors that a producer needs to consider.

“There are a lot of different ways to do it and I think that whatever a producer decides to do has to fit with their goals (and) fit with their management system,” Czech said. “I made the decisions that I felt (were) best for my production model.”