CHANGES are afoot in the way bobby calves will be managed next season. FILE PHOTO
NEXT dairy season will see a change to the way farmers are allowed to manage non-replacement calves born on their properties, with Fonterra updating its terms of supply. The new clause will take effect on the first day of June next year and means calves can only be euthanised on-farm when there is a humane reason for doing so. All non-replacement calves must enter a value stream, including beef, veal and petfood. CONCERN FOR CALVES WELLBEING Fonterra’s website details a concern for animal wellbeing as driving the decision to add the clause to the terms of supply. “Consumers here in New Zealand and around the world are increasingly looking for more assurances around the quality of life experienced by the animals who produce their food. “As part of our strategic choice to lead in sustainability, Fonterra places a strong emphasis on calf wellbeing and a big part of this is ensuring that all dairy calves have a useful life.” The company claimed to be collaborating with the wider farming industry, investing in research and development, and exploring long-term solutions such as dairy-beef partnerships and opportunities to tackle the sparse sale options in parts of New Zealand. STEADY GROWTH IN SEXED SEMEN In another area of the dairy sector, sexed semen sales are experiencing steady growth year-on-year. LIC’s general manager of NZ markets Malcolm Ellis said this was primarily driven by farmers wanting to improve the genetics of their herd. But bobby calves came into consideration, too. Malcom said a random survey asked farmers from around the country what was important when they were using or thinking about using sexed semen. It showed 49% of farmers wanted to reduce bobby calf numbers on their farms, while 51% did not think it was important. Comparatively, 93% of surveyed farmers said they wanted to improve the genetics of their herd. STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT Malcolm said the number of farmers wanting to reduce the number of bobbies they produce was statistically significant and shouldn’t be dismissed. “Even 50/50 says that there is a lot of acknowledgment around bobby calf reduction.” LIC sexed semen straws are delivered fresh to farms daily, Malcolm said, and there was additional insight from that which supported the notion that dairy farmers were using it to produce the best possible replacement calves. Should a farmer have 20 cows ready for mating one day and five straws delivered, they would select their best cows on the day, Malcolm said. But with the top 20% of the herd going to sexed semen, then came the question of what to do with the rest. Malcolm said at the other end of the bell-shaped curve farmers were tending to go for an ‘alternative’ with the poorest 20%. Often that alternative was beef which kept the number of bobbies down. “But with the fickle nature of the dairy beef market at the moment and the high milk price there is a real question mark about who has the appetite to rear these calves, which is therefore driving down the price of the four-day-old calf.” He was seeing significant growth in short gestation length (SGL) dairy semen, which reduced the number of days a cow was in calf. “So farmers are saying ‘I’m going to take my top 20% to sexed, I’m sick of rolling the dice on which beef breed to use, so I’m just going to use SGL dairy which gives me 10 or 12 additional days in milk on each of those cows that calve to that.’ “But they still end up with a bobby calf from that. And that’s a big but because it’s not a beef calf.”
