Imagine discovering that a portion of your milking herd earnt at least $850 a lactation more than some of your other cows.
That's a breakthrough which has recently been uncovered at Mundoolun Dairying in South Australia, thanks to the DataGene's Genetic Futures Report.
The Telford family at Mt Schank, south of Mt Gambier, now monitor their 2750 cows plus their offspring through the report, which is available on DataVat, the dairy industry's herd improvement web portal.
DataVat provides herd reports based on a farmer's own data.
The Telfords were introduced to DataVat by their breeding advisor, Matt Aikenhead, ABS technical and genetic services manager.
He uses the program to demonstrate the value of genetics and identify areas of improvement.
"We ranked the herd based on BPI (Balanced Performance Index) and discovered the difference in total solids production - fat and protein - between the top 25 per cent of the herd and the bottom 25pc was 140 kilograms of milk solids per cow per lactation," he said.
Working on the state's five-year average milk price of $6/kgMS, that equated to an extra milk income of $850 per cow per lactation.
Closing the gap between the top and bottom of the herd is a priority for Mr Aikenhead.
The BPI is one of the indexes the Telfords use to select bulls for joining.
Health is the highest breeding priority, followed by milk solid production and then functional type - including feet, legs, and udders.
As part of Mr Aikenhead's breeding recommendations, he sets a minimum BPI to shortlist the top 20pc of DataGene's Good Bulls Guide.
For genomic bulls this was 325 BPI in April; for proven bulls it was about 300.
Within this group, he looks for bulls that excel in specific traits. For example, he looks for bulls more than 112 for survival and daughter fertility.
It's "early days" in the Telford's journey with the BPI index, but Mr Aikenhead said the direct correlation with profit - and the ability to demonstrate this with the Genetic Futures Report - has helped validate breeding decisions.
"I can speak with some customers about breeding values of bulls and I can see them starting to glaze over," he said.
"But if I can say, 'this is showing your top BPI animals in your herd versus your bottom BPI', that's validation."
"To me, that's an upside because we've told our customers that the BPI works and they've taken my advice at face value but now it's validated within their herd."
Mr Aikenhead said farmers could see that the high BPI animals were outperforming the low BPI animals.
"They say 'that's my herd, not some sort of research study," he said.
"It really hits home when you can talk to a customer about their own herd and their own results as opposed to industry averages."
The Genetic Futures Report also highlighted the need to place further emphasis on daughter fertility within the Mundoolun herd, Mr Aikenhead said.
Genomics
Mundoolun Dairying has also started genomically-testing young stock to build its genetic dataset.
They recently completed tests for 350 autumn calves.
All those animals will have a full set of genomic results and it will go into DataVat where the Telford's can look them up at any time, Mr Aikenhead said.
"These values are 'live' (updated from herd test and other records) and they aren't a static report based on the genomic value of when a heifer was born," he said.
"The Telfords use the genomics to make decisions about heifer exports but now they can go back and look at what the BPI is on any given day."
Matt expects this data would also be used to better target the use of sexed semen and beef on dairy.
Currently, sexed semen is used selectively on the cows - for example those which are more than 55 days in milk at joining and those which are on their first or second lactation.
Sexed semen is also targeted at up to 20pc of the higher genetic merit cows in the herd.
The rest are joined to conventional semen with beef used for the last three weeks of joining.
Heifers are joined to two rounds of sexed semen then run with beef paddock bulls.
Mr Aikenhead was given permission to access the Mundoolun herd information on DataVat by the Telford family.
Travis Telford, who runs the business with his family, said additional and easy to access herd information helped on-farm decision making.
"With genomics, we know a heifer's expected performance well before she's in the herd," he said.
"It costs a lot of money to get a heifer into the herd, so if we know - say at six months - we don't want to milk her, we can look at other avenues for her."
The Mundoolun business is multifaceted; on top of milking cows there's cropping and hay production.
That's why they describe their ideal cow as a "ghost".
"When we are breeding a cow, we are aiming for a cow that we don't notice, a ghost cow: she calves in well; we mate her again and she gets pregnant ... she doesn't get mastitis and doesn't get lame," Mr Telford said.
"She may not be a 15,000 litre cow, but because she's a ghost cow and doesn't get sick or lame, she is making us money every day."
