Fertility trumps carcase traits in search for profit in suckler beef herds

With the changes in agricultural payments around the corner, there has never been a more poignant time for suckler herd producers to home in on how they can make their herd more efficient and more profitable. Worryingly, AHDB figures found that the average suckler producer in England is losing £196 per cow put to the bull before subsidies and with these gradually being transitioned out, what can the suckler herd do to ensure it has a sustainable future? 

This topic became the focus of AHDB’s Senior Knowledge Exchange Manager, Sarah Pick’s 2019 Nuffield Farming Scholarship, sponsored by the Yorkshire Agricultural Society and Worshipful Company of Butchers. 

Sarah says: “Being a beef farmer’s daughter and working for AHDB, I understand the challenges suckler farms face. I wanted to do this scholarship to better understand the key drivers of profitability and the practices other countries are implementing to reduce costs.”

Sarah’s scholarship took her to the USA, Canada and Australia as well as Scotland and Ireland. “What really surprised me was that each suckler farmer I visited had a clear breeding policy which focused heavily on maternal attributes,” Sarah commented.

An economic study suggests that fertility is five times more important than growth rate and ten times more important than carcase quality to the suckler producer, so were we missing a trick here in the UK? One of Sarah’s visits was to Canadian rancher, Jerry Holtman. He ran 360 composite suckler cows in Alberta. He asked: “Why as suckler producers do we focus so much on the finishing animal when 70% of the cost of that animal relates to the suckler cow?”

Jerry has been selecting for fertility for many years, and in 2019 achieved a 93% conception rate within a 55-day breeding period. Sarah says: “There are big improvements the UK can make in terms of fertility. Currently only 82% of suckler cows produce a calf each year which means 18% of cows are being kept and are not producing any output.”

The way cows are managed as youngstock has a huge impact on their lifetime reproductive performance. Therefore, in order to improve fertility, heifers need to be managed effectively and unproductive cows culled, removing any sentimentality.

Sarah says: “Calving heifers at two-years of age reduces costs whilst increasing the number of calves the cow produces over her lifetime. In the UK only 35% of suckler producers implement this practice, however, in other countries I was surprised to hear that it has been commonplace since the 1970s.”

It seems calving at two-years of age is non-negotiable in most parts of the world. Sarah continues: “It’s a great way of indirectly selecting for fertility because only your most fertile heifers will have reached puberty by 15 months of age and any barrens can easily be finished by the 30-month cut-off date.”

However, Sarah acknowledges that calving at two years isn’t all plane sailing and does require good management. “Calving at two is a really effective way of reducing costs, with the most progressive herds in the UK having a 30% lower replacement cost. However, its success is heavily underpinned by nutrition, genetics and selection.

“We shouldn’t fight to keep unsuitable heifers within the herd. Creating weight targets, implementing tight breeding patterns and applying rigorous visual and genetic selection criteria to ensure that only the most productive heifers enter the herd is key.”

Sarah strongly believes that to improve fertility and the success of calving heifers at two years of age, the suckler industry must start focusing on maternal performance. Genetics plays a key part in this, choosing sires with strong maternal estimated breeding values (EBVs) including calving ease, milk, mature size and age at first calving.  

Sarah says: “Irish suckler producers have also recognised the importance of maternal traits and have recently developed a replacement heifer index which is available across breeds.”

Inspired by what she learnt during her Nuffield Scholarship, Sarah, along with her colleagues at AHDB have been developing the AHDB Maternal Matters campaign which will incorporate key findings from her study. It will focus on how suckler producers can improve the maternal performance of their herd by focusing on heifer development and breeding. 

Sarah says: “We will be running a series of on-farm meetings, press articles, webinars and podcasts with handy tips on heifer development and lifetime fertility. We will also be asking farmers to share their experiences by recording short videos, which we will then publish on social media. We really want to get the industry talking and sharing ideas.”

James Shouler is a member of the Beef & Lamb Sector Council and he is a fourth-generation farmer running a 350-acre mixed farm in Oxfordshire. James runs a herd of 65 Simmental cows and over the last couple of years has really focused on selecting heifers which fit his grass-based system.

James says: “I want a cow that rears a calf every year, is cheap to feed and produces at least seven to eight calves in her lifetime. They need to be low input and low management. We had some fairly big Simmentals which were driven by chasing 200-day and 400-day weights. I want to bring this back to around 700kg to reduce maintenance costs.”

In the past, James has tried calving at two-years of age, however, he struggled to get his first calvers to rebreed. James says: “I realise now, I had just got the management wrong, I went to see a couple of farmers who had been doing it for a decent amount of time and learnt from them. It’s just about getting nutrition right and using easy calving, maternal bulls.”   

James has now been calving his heifers at two-years of age with success for the past two years. He discusses more about this heifer replacement policy in an episode of the AHDB Food & Farming podcast. Find it here: https://audioboom.com/posts/7961200-ahdb-beef-lamb-how-calving-heifers-at-two-years-old-can-help-to-boost-profits-in-the-suckler-herd