This episode of The Dairy Show is sponsored by the Council on Dairy
Cattle Breeding. As a producer, you witness the impact of genetics on your
herd every day and have a vested interest in the strength and reliability
of the U.S. genetic evaluation system. Learn about the advancements made in
dairy cattle genetics over the past decade and what is on the horizon on
Wednesday, October 4th, from 8 to 11 30 a.m. in the Tanbark at the 2023 Council
on Dairy Cattle Breeding Industry Meeting, a decade of CDCB, genetic advancement
through pre-competitive collaboration. More information at uscdcb.com
From Madison, Wisconsin, World Dairy Expo presents The Dairy Show, the digital
meeting place of the global dairy industry, where we sit down to talk cows,
cutting-edge technology, and the colored shavings. Welcome to The Dairy Show. I am
your host, Lisa Benke. Today, we'll be speaking with Jonathan Lamb of Oakfield
Corners Dairy. Jonathan also serves on various boards including the Council on
Dairy Cattle Breeding and currently serves as the president of Holstein
Association USA. With almost 2,600 of North America's finest dairy cattle slated
to parade on the colored shavings at World Dairy Expo this year, it's hard not to
focus on genetics and that is precisely why we are talking to Jonathan today.
Jonathan, could you tell us a little bit about yourself as owner of Oakfield
Corners Dairy? Sure, thanks Lisa and thanks for the invitation to be here
today. I'm happy to be here. So I'm one of the owners of Oakfield Corners Dairy
here in Oakfield, New York. I'm a 12th generation farmer and with my wife
Lisa and our family and my brother Matthew and his family were the main
caretakers of all the dairy cattle at Oakfield Corners. How many animals do you
house there? So we actually have four milking facilities. There's three in the
state of New York and one in the state of Ohio. So all together we're milking a
little over 10,000 cows. So I mentioned that we're a 12th generation farmer. We
still think of ourselves as a family farm but we have expanded over the years.
That's an awful lot to manage and today with the focus being on genetics we
wanted to talk to you a little bit more about the ET and the IVF programs that
you have going on at Oakfield Corners Dairy. Can you describe that facility and
how you grew into that facet of the business Jonathan? Sure, as I grew up I
always had an interest in genetics and 4-H and junior Holstein clubs. My
wife Alicia grew up in Florida and she shared that same passion and so when we
came back to our home farm in 1996, a long time ago, we kind of fired up a
little bit of a genetics program and our passion really started with showed
genetics. We were buying into some good cow families and doing a little bit of
showing and we always had a few genomic cattle but it was mostly showed
genetics and then in 2008 with the advent of genomics and then a few years
after that with IVF getting really popular, we really ramped up our ET and IVF
programs and so today we transfer about 7,500 to 8,000 embryos per year. Almost
all of those embryos are IVF embryos. We're a cell life facility for both
transova and for bovatech and most of the work that we do is for index cattle. We
do have a passion for for showing so we do of course do some ET work with
showing and then on the side we also have a small wagyu operation. So around 90,
probably 94% or so of the transfers we do are for index and another 4% would be
for show cattle and then the remainder would be for wagyu. The wagyu, are you
selling directly meat? How are you merchandising your beef? We deal with
wagyu genetics so we don't really market a lot of direct wagyu beef. We have done
some but that's not our main goal. So we're breeders of cattle and in this case
beef cattle and so we did have a wagyu sale a year and a half ago and very
successful and so we have a genetic population of wagyu and we use IVF
technology to try to increase the genetics as well as genomics in our wagyu
herds. So my apologies Jonathan I didn't realize that in addition to the dairy
herds you're also maintaining the select beef herd as well. Where is that herd
housed? We do house them in pens adjacent to dairy cattle so like they're kind of
in the same environment. Wagyu cattle are a little more fragile than
perphers and angus so they take a little extra care but you know the wagyu breed
was intriguing to us and we got plenty to do but every now and then we need a
little bit of space so we bring in some new things and that was an example of
that and so we have fun breeding some wagyu cattle been very successful in
that the wagyu genetics are so highly sought after. Your genetic selection
program has been successful whether we're talking about the beef herd or the
dairy herd. Can you share with us Jonathan what genetic traits do you select
for and maybe how has that changed over the years since you began developing
your own herd? That's a great question and I hear a lot of dairymen answer this
in different ways but we consider ourselves to be indexed breeders and so
we try to use indexes and of course the TPI formula is the number one index I
use and that makes sense as president of the Holstein Association as a caretaker
of that formula but we feel like we can make progress on a lot of traits all at
the same time and sometimes there's some bulls that rank high in TPI but they
have kind of a black eye a trait that they don't do very well in but they
make they do a lot of other traits that they do well in and we like to
correctively mate those traits that need help and then not kind of toss aside
genetics from a single bull or cow family or a heifer that may have a shortcoming
in some area so index breeding is really how we select and that doesn't mean we
don't look at individual traits from time to time but we feel like we can make
progress on all the traits all at the same time by using indexes. We have so
much information at our fingertips to make decisions and like you just pointed
out Jonathan there are as many breeding philosophies as there are people doing
matings out there so let's talk a little bit about that you talked about
obviously that the TPI formula is still very important and now with the advent
of genomics we know so much more about the cows genetic makeup and what her
genetic abilities are and that has in a short amount of time helped us decide I
know there's always been a debate about how much a cow's performance is due to
her environmental care and how much is her genetic makeup can you speak to that
a little bit? Yeah so genomics I mean that's something that really gets me
excited because you know genetics are a passion of ours and so when genomics
came about it was something we embraced very quickly and for a few different
reasons and one of those you just mentioned at a really young age we can
tell with a lot more accuracy the genetic merit of an animal and so what
that allows us to do is decrease the generation interval so we can breed with
bulls and with heifers at a younger age and feel confident that most likely
these genetics that they have are going to be favorable for the future also in
the old days we had herd mate deviations and so that was a system that was you
know it really did allow us to make a lot of progress but it was a system that
had some flaws and so if an animal on purpose or not on purpose got care
better than her her mates she would probably have a good herd mate deviation
and that could skew the system and it did at times and so again it was a good
system we made a lot of progress but since the advent of genomics we've been
making progress faster than we ever had before and on top of that with all of
the increased importance that genetics has received whether it be from dairy
journals or or pharmaceutical companies dairymen are paying attention to
genetics it's such a higher rate than they ever had before and again somebody
was passionate about genetics that gets me excited and so I'm happy that people
realize how important genetics are in their bottom line and are selecting for
it and willing to pay higher dollar for better genomic merit or genetic merit
bowls than they ever had before so I just think that the the future is exciting
but as exciting as the progress we've made in the in the last 15 years with
genomics and how much better our two-year-olds now are than they were
10 or 15 years ago is mind-boggling to me and again it gets me excited to wake
up in the morning put my boots on and come into the farm we all need to be
excited to get out of bed in the morning and go out to the barn so Jonathan
what is the youngest that they collect bulls anymore that's a topic for debate
but each bull is a little bit different but you know somewhere in that 10 months
to 14 months range and sooner or the better with those really high bulls
right and so that's something a lot of times I'm talking to our genetics
providers about is you know can we get these bulls you know into our hands a
little bit more quickly to see me into our hands more quickly so we can use
them a little bit more quickly at World Dairy Expo we celebrate the premier
sire banners and it's interesting how many years some of those sires can stand
at the top of the pile and while that is really great that you have the same
premier sire of the show for multiple years on end it does make people come
into question and say are we tightening up or are we expanding our gene pool at
any given time do you believe that genomics is helping us to expand upon
our genetic pool you know that's a good question I think that dairymen both the
United States and across the world really have to pay attention to diversity of
pedigree and it can be a challenge in that we all want to use the highest and
best genetics but if we don't keep our pedigrees diversified then we risk
nearing our genetic pool I would say dairymen have done overall a good job of
using a variety of different pedigrees and getting that diversity of pedigree
but it is something that bears tension because you know it's something that we
work on at our farm quite a bit another thing that we notice at World Dairy
Expo again it's the global industry's meeting place and US genetics have been
sought after for many many years and we've had many ambassadors from the US
travel to countries outside of the confines of the United States would you
say that US dairy cattle genetics have permeated the world and if so what is
made US dairy genetics the envy of the world yeah I definitely agree with a
statement that our dairy genetics are desirable globally and I think there's a
number of reasons one is our large and robust population size we have a lot of
cows and so we're able to get a lot of information from those cows the
diversity in our genetics and the breeding philosophy of the dairymen
in the United States I think that diversity and breeding philosophy is
something that I like to embrace because I think it's definitely a big
strength of ours the scientists and researchers at Agile USDA and the
Council they also add to our strength of bringing new traits and all the time
continuing the processes of how we evaluate our traits but one of the
biggest reasons is our robust phenotypic data collection our records our milk
production records confirmation records our health records DHI that is really
important as we try to recalibrate the genomic data to the actual phenotypic
environmental data and what goes on and so we see bulls from time to time that
go up or go down when they get in phenotypic environmental data added to
their evaluation and that's really important so that we really make sure
we're making the progress the way we hope we are you bring up a really good
point to Jonathan as important as this new advent of genomics is we know so
much about the genetic composition of an animal but that phenotypic data as you
just stated is still so critically important and maybe let's talk about the
people that collaborate with the Council on dairy cattle breeding to make that
database so robust as you pointed out so this is something that's a concern of
mine is a dairyman it's a concern of mine and it's a concern of mine as
somebody who's passionate about genetics that we keep having all that
phenotypic data feed into the system and so we'll take our farm for example we
DHI test once a month we collect milk samples our health data goes into the
system and then we score on a regular basis so the confirmation data goes
into the system and it's not something that we're going to discontinue we'll
keep doing it but I think that right now the method by which dairymen are
compensated for their data is to get genomic tests at a reduced rate my
concern is that going forward that that's not going to be enough of an
enticement you know to continue that and so I think it's something that the
Council for dairy cattle breeding and the dairy industry at large in the United
States is gonna have to wrestle with because if we see that that data is
going down then I think we need to get our arms in front of it and I want to
be clear about this we're not at a danger level right now but I do think
that we could collect more phenotypic data more environmental data more milk
records more health records then we're doing it this time and it's something
that it bears some attention it's kind of ironic that technology almost is the
enemy of this marvelous database that we've built and I say that because when
you think about all of the on-farm tools that we have nowadays where where farms
basically can silo their information they can collect so much herd health
data and honestly can do inline milk testing all these things that it can be
done on farm when it doesn't go through a dairy records processing center or if
that information isn't collected by a classifier as you just pointed out it
makes it harder to contribute that data to the national database that we've
relied on since well 1905 when that first milk testing was recorded I think
that that's something that the dairy industry can't discount is how very
valuable that shared databases and what it yields in terms of information that's
that's made us push our genetic base forward over the years it's because we
willingly shared data and you just brought that up that there is it's not a
critical point right now but it's something that we have to be mindful of
all of us that the breed dairy cattle if we fail to share our phenotypic data we
are impacting that big database that has served us so well in terms of all of the
information that it pushes back to us in terms of selection information and if
we could get back to that too we talked about your program and what you select
for so you're selecting for index Jonathan tell us about the markets that
you sell to internationally our biggest outlet for our genetics would be through
selling bulls to stud and of course those bulls then go worldwide and we work
with a number of different AI companies and really good partnerships with
different AI companies but that's the number one way that our genetics reach
a worldwide market other avenues would be to selling embryos and we do sell some
embryos mostly to Germany and Japan but we feel really good when our genetics is
able to go worldwide and it's something to be really proud of you talk Jonathan
about the valuable research that USDA agile is performing and that gets down
to isolating genetic traits that are both desirable and undesirable can you talk
about that a little bit about what research is currently being done and
and what traits are being sought to enhance and those that we're hoping to
eliminate from our dairy herd I'll bring up two traits that are being worked on
right now and there's a lot of things being worked on so we'd have to have
another whole podcast to talk about that but as a dairyman I'm going to talk
about some of the things I'm excited about the first one is that there's a
milking speed task force and you just mentioned technology a minute ago and
so in one of our operations we have a 72 stalled robotic rotary it's called the
dairy pro cue and we have a lot of data that comes in with that rotary and one
of those is milking speed we record the milking length of every cow every milking
of every day we milk three times a day and a lot of times one of the bottlenecks
of bringing new traits in is getting good environmental or phenotypic data and
here's an example where we have really good data that exists we know there's a
genetic component to it and we're not doing anything with it right now and so
the scientists have been embracing that and I'm hoping that in the next year or
so we have some milking speed analysis and a trait that we can breed for with
milking speed and we talked about index breeding and milking speed would only be
a small portion of what we would breed for but if we can make progress for that
at the same time that would be fantastic and we know that there's a lot of foreign
countries that already have milking speed evaluations and they do these
evaluations just by simply asking the dairymen is this cow fast or slow and
they're able to get surprisingly good heritabilities from that so this is a
really exciting trait that has good potential and can impact our bottom line
because there are cows that don't milk as fast at times and those are genetics
that are undesirable that we'd like to protect from. Another thing that's been
getting a lot of attention in the Holstein breed is the early onset muscle
weakness syndrome and so some people called this lateral recumbency this is
not a declared undesirable recess of it this point in time but it is something
that we are watching and that we're concerned about we're working with the
scientists both at the council and at USDA to come up with a more accurate
haplotype so that we can get information on how to breed it out of our Holstein
breed it's a very difficult trait to understand and that's why probably we
haven't declared an undesirable recessive yet because we know that we don't
understand everything about this trait it's not just a simple dominant recessive
because there's other traits that seem to be playing into it but that's
something that's been getting a lot of attention at our council meetings and
rightfully so for sending in information so that we can protect against it again
we don't understand it but we know enough about it that if we can give our
breeders and our farmers the tools to avoid a carrier to carrier mating that
would be better for everybody. Suffixes Holstein Association USA used to put
suffixes on animals a mulefoot for instance or RC used to be for red
carrier our suffixes still is important to our registration paper protocols as
they once were. I'm not sure what the current rules on suffixes are but if
something is labeled with an undesirable recessive then it'll be part of the
pedigree so if there's a gene test and if it's tested free or as a carrier it's
labeled again as an index breeder and somebody who thinks that all genes might
have value it pains me to discount the genetic value of an animal simply because
it has one undesirable recessive gene and a lot of times a bull or a heifer might
do a lot of really good things for our Holstein breed but they have one gene
that we don't want to have in the population in that case I would still
try to breed with that animal but I would protect against that and in most
cases within a few generations you can be rid of that one gene that's causing
problems and if you're not then it's probably because you're continuing to
breed with an animal because he or she has a lot of genetic merit that you don't
want to lose from the breed so just a little plug for me because we don't take
a really harsh view of an animal that have one gene that we may not like we
sort of have danced around this answer with the discussion that's taken place
thus far but Jonathan dairy farm data is it's what powers reliable genetic
evaluations in the United States so could you boil it down for our listeners
how the CDC be the council on dairy cattle breeding stewards your dairy data
and that that everyone else in the dairy population is contributing and how do
they convert it into information that breeders can use but that's going to be
kind of a long answer and I'm not sure I'm the best one to answer but I can say
that both the breed associations and our case Holstein Association takes that
role as steward of the data very seriously and with our DHIA associations
we use dairy one and then the dairy records processing center that we use
is agritic analytics out in California they in turn take that very seriously as
being stewards of the data and from there the milk data goes to the council for
dairy cattle breeding and then of course scores confirmation goes directly from
the breed associations to the council and I can tell you at every step of the
way they do take the role as being stewards of that data very seriously and
it does get discussed sometimes at length we want to make sure that anybody
has access to the data is authorized to have access to the data if they are
they've signed the appropriate legal documents so that everybody understands
what's going on with them we talk about this at every meeting almost and just
making sure that we've crossed our T's and dotted our eyes so we take that
really seriously from there the scientists at the council and USDA they
number crunched the data with really big computers they have millions and
millions of records and that's how they come up with the indexes is a dairy
minute times you feel like there's some blind faith in what they're doing they're
using herd mate deviations and they have a lot of different data checks that go
through but I can tell you from years and years of breeding dairy cattle if the
council there's scientists or breed associations say a bull is gonna have
daughters with a lot of milk if you use that bull you're gonna see that come
through right and so it doesn't matter if it's confirmation if it's milk if it's
butter fat if it's percent butter fat genetics work and at times there's a
little bit of blind faith in the data I tease the scientists from some time to
time and tell them well I hope they didn't forget to carry the one as they
were doing their mathematics there but they are really an asset to us and to
our breeding and dairy industry and all the work that they do speaking of assets
I think that all of us who breed dairy cattle owe a big debt of gratitude to the
council on dairy cattle breeding and the USDA Agile scientists the cooperation
the information that they collect and steward I think that's a great word that
use the stewardship that they have of that huge database it's information that
we as dairymen can't possibly process ourselves but collectively they boil it
down to information that is critical for our mating decisions and so to that
again we owe a debt of gratitude Jonathan in your estimation how do we keep
this collaborative system healthy how do we keep people contributing to that
database that's an excellent question and so really that's up to the board of
directors for the council to make sure that stays on track now they're not the
only ones and certainly there's a lot of opinions and of people that everybody
takes seriously but the council board is made up of the DHIA associations the
dairy records processing association NAAB National Association animal
breeders the bullsuds and then PDCA the breed associations and so we all come
into these meetings and we have our respective hats that we're wearing but
we need to for the good of the dairy industry we need to kind of move those
hats aside for a little bit and try to make progress for everybody all
at once and rising tide lifts all ships and so I can tell you here recently
there was a few different initiatives to help with that in April in Louisville
the council board had a strategic session where we talked about our strengths
weaknesses opportunities and threats for a day and a half we kind of put them all
in different buckets Joe Durr the chair of the council he's working on coming
up with initiatives that we're going to be working on based off of that
strategic session just last week which would be the third week of August the
CDC be held a national cooperative data dairy workshop all the stakeholders
from the different organizations whether they be genomic labs AI studs breed
associations dairy records processing centers DHIAs and the council scientists
and USDA scientists all came together and talked about what are some of the
bottlenecks where are things being held up how can we have more free exchange of
data what do we need to watch out for and the really nice thing about this there
were over 100 people this workshop but it was the people that were doing the work
on a day-to-day basis so the people that see where the hangups are or where the
bottlenecks are and so having different programs like that workshop and strategic
sessions is how hopefully we can continue to stay on task for the good of the
dairy industry I can't thank you enough as if managing over 10,000 cows and
generating 7,500 embryos on an annual basis isn't enough work you're
contributing that producer voice that's so essential to the research that's
being conducted and to the decisions that are being made on how we advance our
US genetics so thank you for contributing your talents to Holstein USA and to the
council and dairy cattle breeding and for joining us here today on the dairy
show again as we close Jonathan in your estimation what do you think our next
genetic milestone will be in the dairy industry for genetic milestones I like
to not try for grand slams and home runs I tried for base hits and so I think
we're gonna continue to see small incremental gains and hopefully a
state of continual improvement and as you gave me that wrap up there I just
want to make sure that both at my home farm that I recognize my team and my
wife and my family because any successes that I've ever enjoyed come because
somebody else behind me did a nice job and that's really true with my role in
the Holstein Association as well I mean we're blessed with a great board but the
council is a dairy cattle breeding has a board of great minds and the staff at
both organizations are tremendous and so I usually don't do anything but try
not to get in their way and so all those successes we've enjoyed are because of
their effort well Jonathan we look forward to seeing the progress that you
make at Oakfield Corners Dairy we look forward to seeing the progress that
Holstein USA makes and we're certainly looking to learn more about the council
on dairy cattle breeding I know that there is an industry meeting that will
be taking place at World Dairy Expo on October 4th starting at 8 a.m. could you
share a little bit with that from a producer perspective why shouldn't you
miss that CDCB industry meeting on October 4th. It's a great opportunity to
hear what's going on with the council it's a great opportunity to talk to other
dairymen that are interested in genetics and it's been a really popular event it
World Dairy Expo and we actually changed the venue this year because how we
were bursting the seams last year so it's been really successful and hopefully
everybody gets a chance to 10 I think they work on a simulcast so if you can't
be in Madison Wisconsin on October 4th hopefully we can get it where you can
see it online I think it's a great time and a lot of times when you're at these
meetings to you learn as much from in the hallway and it's going to be a well
attended event by a lot of dairy producers who I think very very highly of
so I learned from them as well as from the presenters the networking
opportunities and the connections you can make at World Dairy Expo are
boundless we hope that you are able to join us October 1 through 6 in
Madison Wisconsin for this year's show it's the 56th edition of World Dairy
Expo and it promises all that is good about the dairy industry we've got the
world's largest dairy focused trade show we've got industry experts on hand that
you can interact with we've got the world's greatest parade of dairy
genetics taking place again starting on Sunday October 1st with the junior
Holstein show and ending on Friday with our Parade of Supreme Champions so
please join us in Madison Wisconsin October 1 through 6 we look forward to
seeing you there and I will remind you now to buy your tickets in advance
discount ticket prices are available through October 3rd and again we'll see
you in Madison Wisconsin thank you Jonathan for being our guest today
thanks Lisa my pleasure again we want to thank the sponsor of this episode of
the Dairy Show the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding whether selecting a
mating for your next expo winner or utilizing genomics to make management
decisions learn about your part in reliable genetic evaluations through the
Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding at uscdcb.com
thank you for joining us for this episode of the Dairy Show we hope you
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