Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, is talking with Oklahoma State University Extension Beef Cattle Nutrition Specialist, Paul Beck, about the rise of dairy beef.
“A 100 percent dairy steer is very low in value,” Beck said. “So, the dairies have treated those like they are a biproduct or just kind of a waste. There has been a change in some reproduction technologies that our dairies are taking advantage of where they can use sexed semen to produce heifer calves out of only their best cows to make their replacements.”
Some dairies have begun to breed a beef-type bull to their mediocre cows, Beck said, because they need a pregnancy to restart lactation.
“That has given us a large availability of some beef-dairy crosses that are very superior to a 100 percent dairy animal in beef production, performance, efficiency, and they are keeping a lot of the high-quality meat characteristics that we would see with a dairy calf,” Beck said.
The industry has become increasingly more interested in the beef-dairy cross, Beck said, and how to utilize those cattle in beef production systems.
“At Oklahoma State, we have been doing some research with beef on dairy crosses,” Beck said.
The research at OSU, Beck said, is looking at how to incorporate those cattle into the finishing period, whether that means going directly to finish on feed or putting them out on grass as stocker cattle.
“We were able to finish these calf-feds in about 312 days, taking them from 280 pounds up to close to 1400 pounds in that time,” Beck said.
When those calves were put out on pasture and raised them for five or six months to gain a couple hundred pounds, Beck said, the feeding period to get those cattle up to about 1400 pounds was cut down to 180 days. Those cattle, Beck said, graded 94 percent Choice.
“A lot of people are interested in it because we are low on cow herd numbers and this is going to be four of five million available calves coming from the dairies that will need to go somewhere, so they have the potential to be used in a stocker program,” Beck said.
Beck said the research continues as these cattle will be tried in several different production systems in the near future.
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