What is Breeding to Feeding™ ?
Breeding to Feeding™ is a fully integrated system that joins dairy farms to cattle feeders through genetics. The program greatly benefits those dairies that are looking to take their sexed semen and beef semen strategies to the next level, with true pull-through demand from a cattle feeder. While the dairy focuses on making the right replacement females out of the right cows, we provide the genetics to make a valuable, terminal, crossbred calf.
The dairy generates calves for the cattle feeder that perform and excel in a feedyard setting. With dairy calves being born year round on farms, this makes for a more consistent flow of calves born at the dairy and finished in the feedyard. It creates a win-win for both the dairy producer and the cattle feeder, through a complete, efficient, feedback loop.
How does it all work? It starts with Wulf Cattle making high-quality beef sires that are custom-made with the dairy cow in mind.
Breeding to Feeding™ is a fully integrated system that joins dairy farms to cattle feeders through genetics. The program greatly benefits those dairies that are looking to take their sexed semen and beef semen strategies to the next level, with true pull-through demand from a cattle feeder. While the dairy focuses on making the right replacement females out of the right cows, we provide the genetics to make a valuable, terminal, crossbred calf.
The dairy generates calves for the cattle feeder that perform and excel in a feedyard setting. With dairy calves being born year round on farms, this makes for a more consistent flow of calves born at the dairy and finished in the feedyard. It creates a win-win for both the dairy producer and the cattle feeder, through a complete, efficient, feedback loop.
How does it all work? It starts with Wulf Cattle making high-quality beef sires that are custom-made with the dairy cow in mind.
Creating Breeding to Feeding™ Sires
- We start with our registered Limousin cow herd as the foundation to make strategic mating decisions.
- When mating these females, we select for prospective sires that are homozygous black and polled.
- We evaluate all new potential sires against our current Breeding to Feeding™ sire inventory index using real world data from our dairies and cattle feeding operations.
- We select for the genetic lines that perform the best in our feedyards and on the rail from the carcass data we receive.
- Every 30 days, these bulls are evaluated for fertility. A new prospective sire must go through a total of three rounds of fertility testing to become an approved Breeding to Feeding™ sire for Riverview dairies.
- If the prospective new sire manages to surpass the current lineup, he graduates on to full production and will be used on our Riverview dairy cows as an approved Breeding to Feeding™ sire.
Breeding to Feeding™ sires are constantly evaluated for continual improvement in:
- Conception rate
- Calving ease
- Gestation length
- Optimized birth weights for calving ease, calf health, and growth