As an industry we must ensure that we are doing everything we can to provide the best life possible for any given animal. The first step is fine tuning management protocols, nutrition and environmental factors. The second step is adding genomic testing and selecting for calf genetic traits. This can provide a proactive approach to enhancing animal welfare and wellbeing, antibiotic stewardship, and overall sustainability on a dairy.
Management Practices Paired with Genomic Testing
The relationship between environment and genetic potential is not either or. Both elements work together and need to be prioritized to help minimize disease and death loss in calves. A great calf may have resistance to scours, but if she is challenged too much from environmental circumstances, her immune system will give in. Likewise, a dairy could have great facilities and management protocols, but if a calf is more susceptible to sickness due to her genetics, she can get sick.
For instance, I worked with a producer that was struggling with a high rate of scours in his Jersey herd. He was convinced that it was his facilities or Jersey’s susceptibility to sickness, and I implored him to look into his calf wellness traits through genomic testing. After ranking his calves with the CLARIFIDE® Plus Calf Scours trait, we found that while 12% of the top-ranked group had scours, 70% of the bottom-ranked group had succumbed to these infections. With this insight, we were able to put a plan in place to help improve calf health and survivability in his herd and help optimize his management decisions by investing in his top replacement heifers.
Calf genetic traits available through genomic testing with CLARIFIDE® Plus focus on wellness and include calf livability, scours and calfhood pneumonia. The ability to test for these wellness traits pulls the curtain back on the incidences of disease and provides producers with a proactive approach to protecting the future generation and their potential.
Furthermore, the cost of poor calf health is significant and the impact of calfhood disease cannot be undone. I received a call from a producer in Texas who told me their highest genomic ranking production cow had just calved in and was only milking 20 to 30 pounds a day. He no longer believed in genomic testing. Suspecting something more may be at play here, I asked him to look into the cow’s calfhood health records to review any known sickness or complications. After looking into this, we found she had been treated for BRD three times as a calf. It didn’t matter how she was ranked because she had lung damage from this previous sickness and was not going to live up to her full genetic potential.
Building the Next Generation to Reach Your Goals
Calf genetic traits provide added value to producers for making management decisions and can help enhance overall animal-wellbeing and genetic expression in a herd.
One of the biggest pushbacks I hear when making the case for calf genetic traits is, “Why would I select for calf wellness traits when I receive results months later and scours or BRD infection has already occurred?” My response: to build the next generation better and select for the animals that will help achieve the best herd possible.
Using genomic testing to measure a calf’s livability and susceptibility to disease can lend great insights about if she will make a reliable and profitable replacement and what traits she would pass on. A dairy’s future replacements must be able to live longer, have enhanced fertility, produce more milk, bring in profit and stay healthy. The status quo will not cut it and genetic improvements must be made to move the herd forward.
I have heard producers say that their calves get scours or respiratory disease, and they deal with it. But what will we be left in the end? Not only are there costs for treatment, but costs to future potential, profitability and animal welfare. Though it is not realistic, nor should it be expected that an operation would have zero cases of disease, genomic testing can help lower the occurrence of these serious health challenges. This is an opportunity to not settle and beat the status quo.
Looking to the Future
As producers build their next generation, it’s important to recognize the positive impact that genomic testing can have on overall wellness and animal welfare. Calf genetic traits provide the opportunity to select for animals that are projected to promote sustainable herd health.
Conversations surrounding these topics are not going away. Genomic testing is just one slice of the pie that showcases that the dairy industry cares about maintaining a sustainable environment and ensuring a safe and healthy food supply.
The dairy industry is filled with innovations and evolutions as we work toward improved efficiency, animal welfare and sustainability. At Zoetis, we have taken steps to help make genomic insights actionable and relevant in today’s market.
Dairy Wellness Profit Index® (DWP$), the selection index utilized with CLARIFIDE® Plus, has been recently updated to include new genetic traits and economic values that can help producers work toward improved sustainability on their dairy operation. With a focus on antibiotic stewardship and animal welfare, CLARIFIDE Plus offers calf and cow wellness traits to provide key indicators of an animal’s projected overall wellbeing to help work toward improved animal husbandry and allocation and use of resources.
The Take-Home Message
Calf genetic traits provide producers an added value in their management strategy and are an untapped opportunity to improve overall health and profitability on a dairy. Young calves represent the future of a herd, so let’s do everything we can to provide the best possible life for them.
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