Research Summary - 2
Evaluation of the expected value of an incremental increase in sexed semen usage on 9 U.S. commercial dairies
| Date/Time: |
8/28/2026
15:15
|
| Author: |
Julie Adamchick |
| Clinic: |
Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine |
| City, State, ZIP: |
Ithaca, NY 14853 |
J.S. Adamchick, DVM, PhD
1
;
M.B. Capel, DVM, DABVP (Dairy)
2
;
K.R. Briggs, DVM, MBA
3
;
D.V. Nydam, DVM, PhD
1
;
1Department of Public and Ecosystem Health, College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
2Perry Veterinary Clinic, Perry, NY 14530
3fairlife, Chicago, IL 60607
Introduction:
Semen Solver is a public tool (https://hdl.handle.net/1813/117694) to help dairy farmers compare semen strategies for a set of herd management and economic inputs, and to quantify the cash flow tradeoffs of varying levels of sexed or beef semen. Our objective was to evaluate, for several case study herds, whether to increase sexed semen usage in lactating cows enough to support a 5-pt increase in RR (e.g., from 32 to 37%), replacing the same quantity of beef semen. Our expectation was that the choice of semen strategy and resulting RR would vary across herds.
Materials and methods:
We recruited a convenience sample of 9 commercial US dairy herds ranging from 513 to 5359 cows. First, management inputs derived from DairyComp305 backups were used with the Semen Solver tool to estimate how much additional milk production was needed to offset the raising and opportunity costs of producing enough dairy females to replace an additional 5 percentage points of each herd annually. The spreadsheet tool was coupled with @Risk software to use input distributions to represent the uncertainty and variation of future economic values. The mean (standard deviation) of inputs for crossbred beef calf, dairy bull calf, and market cows were $1200 ($261), $853 ($239), and $1733 ($221), respectively. The price for springing heifers was set at $2717 ($331). Milk price was $21.17/cwt ($1.51) and lactating feed cost was $0.118 ($0.009)/lb dry matter. The cost to raise an average replacement to 24 months was $2381 ($90). Next, herd records were used to estimate how much more milk to expect from the additional replacements (assumed to make the average production of current first lactation cows) relative to the cows they would replace (calculated as the average production of the same number of lowest producing cows, among those considered eligible for replacement: >60 days in milk and <180 days carried calf). Finally, we used the Semen Solver tool to evaluate the option of selling rather than keeping the additional dairy females, in order to consider the suite of outcomes from increasing sexed semen (i.e., potential cash flow from either springer sales or milk revenue/market cow sales).
Results:
The herds fell into 3 groups, classified as “increase sexed semen”, “don’t increase sexed semen”, or “more information needed”. The expected increase in production for the first group (3 herds) ranged from 19-24 lbs/cow/d above what the cows replaced would have made, within +/- 1 lb/cow/d of the mean breakeven needed for each herd. This was coupled with minimal downside risk if the farms chose to sell rather than keep the additional springers (3-4% additional cost/year relative to if they had instead used beef semen). The baseline RR of these herds ranged from 26-41%, and after the 5-pt increase in RR they would use sexed semen in 22-32% of lactating cow breedings with an estimated beef-on-dairy revenue of $665-741 /adult cow/year. The 4 herds in the second group (“don’t increase sexed semen”) fell short of what was needed to break even, with expected increases of 9-19 lb/cow/day over the cows to be replaced, landing 6-24 lbs/cow/day below the mean increase required to offset costs. These herds had RR’s that ranged from 27-41%, calculated sexed semen usage of 17-40% in lactating cows to maintain that turnover and an estimated beef-on-dairy revenue of $643-837 per cow/year. The final 2 herds each had a modest shortfall in expected milk (1-5 lbs/cow/d below breakeven), a cost that may be offset by the benefits of flexibility and buffering against future uncertainty that comes with additional replacements in the pipeline.
Significance:
This analysis illustrates the unique nature of farm breeding and replacement decisions. Dairy herds can use management and production data together with tools like Semen Solver to do better than guessing or relying on industry averages when making semen choices within their individual herds.
