Beef cow is a dairy cow

There are beef cattle producers. There are dairy cattle owners. Never the two types of cows shall meet after all. As Olivia Gunther Schroeder of Pareto points out, in addition to the differing end points and products associated with beef and dairy cows. Speaker2: The type of cattle that produce a lot of milk and good quality milk are very different than the type of animals that produce good quality beef. And so that's really kind of where our two different genetic streams come from. Speaker1: Yet with the current trend of tightening cattle inventories, what is one way to perhaps add more beef cattle into the supply chain? Genetics. Speaker2: Mixing those two types of genetics. So breeding our dairy cows to beef semen and actually producing a calf that is part beef and part dairy, and really improving the value of what that calf is because it is going to specifically go into beef production as opposed to dairy production. Speaker1: Now, one might think the emphasis is on value added for the beef cattle grower. Speaker2: It's actually the exact opposite. We're trying to add value to what would typically be just a dairy animal. So we're trying to add beef value to that animal and actually produce good quality beef at the end. Speaker1: She says from a price perspective, dairy cattle are traditionally half the value of beef steers. So think of a Holstein cow long associated with the dairy industry. How might it become value added as also. Beef cattle through genetics. Speaker2: Holsteins don't fit as well into the beef production system as our typical beef animals would. So when we mix the genetics, we maintain really good things that come from the Holstein breed, which like marbling. But we bring in reduced days on feed and increased carcass yields that allow for an animal that is produced as a part of the dairy industry, but actually fits much better into the beef industry at the end of the day. Speaker1: Something else to consider. Traditionally, dairy cattle have a longer lifespan than beef cattle. That is due in part to export restrictions allowing only beef cuts from younger cattle to enter markets, primarily as a food safety precaution. Olivia, how might this all work in the context of a beef dairy cow hybrid? Speaker2: So we're really putting this calf into essentially what is our beef raising system. So we can actually, depending on how we beat them and how we manage them, we can certainly get them to harvest by 13 to 14 months of age, maybe a little bit longer than you would with a native beef steer. That's one of the things that bringing in beef genetics does, is it really reduces that days on feed, and actually reduces the age at which that ani