ProCROSS boosts cow health and fertility for American dairy

After their fluid milk processor served notice, Kelly and Christy found a new home for their milk with a cheese maker. This became the catalyst for them to start crossbreeding in favour of higher components.

Cows are housed in sand cubicle sheds, and 65% of the cows ­– first and second lactation animals – are milked three times a day through a 30/60 double-up BouMatic parlour. This is ‘maxed out’ milking 305-310 cows/hour and only turns off for two daily washdowns, taking 40 minutes each time. 

The Cunninghams own 1,100 acres and grow exclusively maize. However, they use winter cover crops of oats and no-till cultivation to achieve yields of 24t/acre. Maize silage makes up the bulk of the milking ration alongside purchased alfalfa, soya bean meal, maize grain and cotton seed.

Their milk is sold to Associated Milk Producers in Minnesota. Currently, the price is 39p/litre, but haulage is his third biggest cost at 2p/litre behind feed and labour.

Unlike most all-year-round calving herds, Kelly does not use pregnancy rate as a measure of success. Instead, he prefers to focus on two KPIs: the percentage of cows bred by 150 days and the number of cows not bred by 100 days.

“I want to have less than 20 cows per month not bred by 100 days and 85% of my cows pregnant by 150 days. So, I want 50% of my cows pregnant at any given time or a little bit more. On average, I can get there. On my hotter months, I go a bit below my goal,” he explains.

Kelly is also moving against the grain when it comes to blanket use of hormones. While he said many US farmers use electronic heat detection and double ov-sync as standard breeding practices, he still chalks cows and does not intervene with ov-sync unless cows are not pregnant by 100 days in milk (DIM).

“I want a cow to come into heat on her own, number one. Number two, we have such good reproductive success with ProCROSS that I’m not worried if she gets a little longer in milk,” he says.

The Cunninghams are a ‘hair away’ from breeding all cows to beef in the not-too-distant future if he can lower the cull rate to 20%. Then, dairy replacements will be bred exclusively using virgin heifers.

This will allow him to capitalise on strong beef prices. In fact, he says beef calf sales, along with cull cow sales and milk price hedging, now account for 40% of total income.

His most recent batch of 8,000 calves was sold at 308kg. They cost $930 to grow and yielded a profit of over $1000 a head. “With ProCROSS, we can create higher rear quarter muscling closer to a beef animal,” he says.

Kelly believes the future of dairying in the US is bright and has just invested in a third unit. “I’m in pursuit of more cows as we speak, and I’m evaluating investing in a fourth dairy,” he ends with a smile.

In the picture: ProCROSS cow daughter of VH Neptune, from Anders Nilsson's herd Skråmered in Sweden.