When it comes to creating healthier, longer-living cows, genetics are the engine and nutrition is the fuel. This week Dr. Kevin Ziemba, Global Support Specialist at STgenetics, discusses strategies for better cow management, focusing on improving cow welfare, genetics, and reducing epigenetic risks. Our discussion covers the importance of managing both sides of the genetic equation and the importance of being as meticulous with female selection as we are with sire selection. This conversation will make you rethink traditional methods and explore management practices to ensure healthier, longer-lasting, profitable herds.
Kevin Ziemba is the Eastern Region Manager and part of the Genetic Development Team for STgenetics, where he and his team provide genetic support and resources to dairy producers. Kevin graduated from Cornell University where he earned a master’s degree in quantitative genetics. He is an active alumna, returning to Cornell to guest lecture the Dairy Genetics class each year and has coached the Cornell dairy judging team.
If you would like to discuss this topic further, contact us. Contact us.
🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!
Scott Zehr
All right. Hey, welcome everybody to Ruminate This with Agrarian Aolutions. I’m your host, Scott Zehr. We are going to be talking with Dr. Kevin Ziemba from Sexing Technologies. And, I’m pretty pumped to have Kevin, you on the call today, for a number of reasons.
One though, because we have a little history together and we might dive into a little bit of that as we get rolling. So Kevin, welcome to Ruminate This and appreciate you taking the time. Let’s hear a little bit about Dr. Kevin Ziemba. People that might not know you’re currently working working with Sexing Technologies, just a little bit about, your role there at ST and, maybe some backstory as well.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Sure, sure. Well, thanks for having me, Scott. And super excited to get a chance to delve into the concept of how genetics and ruminant nutrition kind of can go hand in hand to help you out for sure. So anyways, my, I guess we’ll start with the backward side and, you know, my current role with ST Genetics is more of like a global support specialist, I guess is the best way to put it.
So I do a lot of genetic education, internationally. Anything that’s going on with the traits that CDCB is, you know, putting forth the new traits or changes to existing traits as far as methodologies or, or even data sets and accuracies of those traits.
So spend a lot of time out in the, different aspects of the, the world, learning what those folks are doing in different parts of the globe to feed our growing population and what genetic parameters actually matter to them in getting that job done.
I also spend a lot of time working with our genetic development team, sire selection, genetic goals, some of the technologies that we’re putting forth to create those genetics. So very exciting stuff to be involved with.
And, to kind of work my way a little bit backwards, if it matters to some of the listeners out there. But, Scott and I spent quite a bit of time working together for a former company that I worked for, which I hold near and dear to my heart.
And, in addition to that, I coach the Cornell University Dairy Judging Team. And then do some guest lecturing at some colleges and previously had taught the Genetics class at Cornell. So, I’m going to date myself, but I’ve, I’ve been at this awhile.
Scott Zehr
Oh, that’s all right. I think back Kevin on, on some of those years where we were both, coworkers and believe it or not, that was 11 years ago that I started with Premier.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Zehr
I find it hard to believe it’s been that long. But, I want to just kind of touch on something because so, about 2018 ish, I started working in more of a consulting role, repro analysis, beef on dairy kind of stuff.
And, I visited a farm that you had worked with and probably still do, in another state in New England. I’m not going to name drop or get too specific. But, I want to share this story to kind of demonstrate some of the lessons I learned from you. So, and believe me folks, we have, we, I did not discuss this with him ahead of time, so I’m, I’m kind of putting him on the spot.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
This is great.
Scott Zehr
But there was a dairy that you were working with and they told you, we can’t do double off sync. We can’t give shots in the pen. It can’t be done.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Yep.
Scott Zehr
And how did you handle that situation, Kevin?
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
I might have strongly reinforced the fact that yes, yes, you can. And it’s a little bit more of a getting your proverbial stuff together and saying to yourself, if we want to have reproductive success, we’ve got to dot the I’s and cross the T’s. And however that works, we’ve got to do that because there are folks out there that are doing that and making that conscious choice to do that and having success.
So sometimes you have to, choose whether , you’re going to do it the easy way or you’re going to do it the right way. And I’ve always lived in the space of you got to do it the right way.
Scott Zehr
I think one of the sayings I learned from you that I still use today, I was on a dairy last week, this week, what’s today? It was last week.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
And I still use this saying today. Anytime we opt for convenience, we sacrifice success.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
100%. 100%.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. Now, back to that story though. Wasn’t there something that you did in particular to prove that it could be done?
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Did I go out in the pen and give shots or something? I’m not sure.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, if I recall, you spent maybe a week or so up there.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
You know, it’s not like you were working on the farm.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Yeah, I did. That’s right.
Scott Zehr
And just printed some lists and went out there and said, hey, it can be done.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
And you know, I, I wanted to share that story because when you’re working with people, developing people, you know so I’m an entrepreneur. I have a couple of small businesses that I run up here too. And when I started my first company in 20, gosh, It’s been a long time, I think it was 2004 I started Zara’s Auction Service, so I’m an auctioneer.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Right.
Scott Zehr
And that was the first time I had employees working for me. And you know, you kind of think, “Hey, I’m, I’m the boss. I can just, I can just point and say, “Hey, you go do this and you go do that.’ Cause I don’t want to do those things, right?
I don’t want to dig through somebody’s attic and have to deal with mice infested boxes. But, I learned really quickly that you can’t expect somebody to do something you’re not willing to do yourself.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Oh, for sure.
Scott Zehr
And, and so I think that was a valuable lesson, that I learned learned from you, is, hey, if you’re going to go out and you’re going to talk to dairymen and, or cattle ranchers, you know, whatever, and you’re going to recommend ideas, concepts, things they can do to improve, you know, run it through that test.
Would I do this if I were in that position? And I think that’s something that I just, yeah, I wanted to bring it up. And I think that’s an important lesson that I think anybody listening to this podcast could probably take some notes on. But, let’s dive into the meat and potatoes of, of what we’re here to talk about.
And, Kevin, when I reached out to you to see if you’d be willing to come on and visit, I’d asked you the question, essentially with the virgin heifer population in the U.S. at a near all time low. We need our cows to last longer, right? There’s, there’s less replacements. So, you know, there puts more pressure on voluntary calling. It is going to require, you know, cows to stay in the herd longer. How do we do it?
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Yeah, I mean that’s a very loaded question, Scott. Thanks for, like, lobbing it out there with, like, a big, broad paintbrush. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of factors that go into that, of course. And you know, you have everything from the management strategies.
Like, I’ll back up. I, I can remember when I, I graduated from Cornell and would be out doing some consulting work. And a herd would have a average days open of like 135 to 140 and a preg rate of you know 18 to 2. And we would be sitting there giving them a high five. And in today’s world, that would be in the bottom, you know, two to 5%.
So my statement is, you know, management’s really improved and we’ve got to continue, you know, as we take care of cows, cows take care of us. You know, these herds that, and managers and owners who really developed animal welfare protocols that really surround themselves with the concept of making cows last longer and perform all the way throughout their, their lactations, you know, is, is incredible. These dairies are doing an incredible job with that.
Yeah, I think as these birds continue to develop stronger management practices and following that animal welfare models, we’re seeing those cows last significantly longer, you know? What used to be, herds that had, you know, 40 percent cull rates because cows couldn’t make it to, you know, lactation to, you know, now herds are, are easily seeing, you know, lactation one cull rates independently being in the low twenties.
And you know, now we’re, we’re seeing a higher percentage of cows getting the lactation three, four and even beyond. And so, you have the animal welfare, the animal management, the, the total nutrition package that’s going into these cows that, that are, you know, creating those performance metrics, but the, the genetics is the engine, right?
So that genetic component of you know, what these cows are able to produce is changed substantially. You know, both from a phenotype of production, but a phenotype of longevity and confirmation. You’d never hear dairymen talk about, you know, poor uddered cows, anymore.
You, you speak more along the lines of, you know, what’s the optimum frame size for a dairy cow in today’s environment, you know. Just to illustrate that genetic component. I mean, speaking of components, yeah, right.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, wow.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
It’s crazy. You know, and we could say that percent fat and percent protein have increased substantially especially percent fat as a factor of nutrition. For sure. There’s, there’s no doubt about it.
Scott Zehr
There’s a huge genetic component to that though.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
For sure. And, and the baseline of genetics that’s been created, people often forget that the heritability of percent fat is like 48 to 52 percent depending on what papers you read. Where like pounds of fat and milk pounds are like 21 to 24%.
So we can really change the components of the milk products that we create, you know, to, to help make more solids in that production pipeline and that’s, that’s huge. So, you really put into a combination of that genetics and the epigenetics and then the overall management.
Going into it though, further, you know, when we get into reduced heifers. I think it’s a little bit of a yang and a yang, right? So you, you have less need for female replacements on the dairy. But we want to make sure that we’re still like culling appropriately. Because I can see a few dairies being like, “well, you know, the cost of replacements is really high. The cost to raise those replacements is really high. So I’m going to make the least amount I can because the beef cross calf is worth the most at day old. So I’m going to put my margin as tight as I possibly can.”
And then the next thing, you know It’s not that the cows can’t last long, they can. Bbut some of them, we may not want them to last that long. So we, we’ve got to play a little fine line with that voluntary culling rate, especially when we get to fourth lactation and beyond, just because she can. I mean, it’s a balance, right?
Like we want those cows that last super long, but that cow also has to be, you know, a profitable entity on the farm as well. And, and sometimes newer, younger cows coming in can be a benefit as well. So, you know, you gotta play both sides of the equation all the time and no one answer is right every time.
Scott Zehr
It’s, it’s a good illustration though because you could easily see how it would lead somebody to hang on to cows for the wrong reasons, right?
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Oh, for sure.
Scott Zehr
And, and we, you know, we, we see that, you know, I see it, and I not to pick on my dad in every episode, but I, I see that, like, at, at I use that because I’m, I’m close to it, you know, where I, I asked, you know, why, why are we hanging onto this cow? Well, you know, “yeah, she’s maybe only given 50 pounds of milk, but she’s a good cow. She’s pregnant, but she’s 300 days in milk and she’s not due to dry off for two months.”
You know, dad’s in a unique position equity wise and 47 years in farming. He’s going to be able to absorb that. But, I, I think when we look at, you know, in the real world, I don’t want to diminish what he’s done, but I think we look at that from an economic standpoint and, and it’s, it’s like, no, let’s not hang on to these cows for the wrong reasons.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Yeah, I work with a herd in Vermont that has a 25 percent cull rate and milk 1,700 cows. And oftentimes we’re having that conversation of you know, well, how long should we hang on to a certain subsector of calves. And, and determining, you know, what the, you know, cause they can make a very strong justification income over feed costs, right?
But are they optimizing that income over feed costs at certain aspects? So, you know, it is, it is balanced. I mean, this is a little different than what we, we plan to talk about, but it is part of that discussion because, you know, this, this heifer population topic is, is, is very, very tied to the, the discussion of how we manage calves for sure.
Scott Zehr
Oh, I, I think so. And I want to go back to something you said earlier about the fat and protein.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Mm hmm.
Scott Zehr
If I were to pick one singular thing to point at and, and just say, hey, this, this is what happens at the crossroads of, of genetics and nutrition. So I had this discussion with a nutritionist not that long ago. And, it was here in New York state. And I want to say it was, was it maybe 10 years ago?
It was a really big deal. If somebody was making six pounds of components.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
And maybe not, maybe only like, actually it wasn’t even 10 years ago, like 20, 2018, this is six years ago. Like that was a big fricking deal. They passed out awards for it.
And, you know, I was on a dairy a couple of weeks ago, Kevin, they were at 7.6. Not for the average for the year, but, for that last like three week period. And, so one of the companies out there, they have this, this six pound club, the seven pound club.
And I know a dairyman that he was, you know, he got, he got the seven pound club award and he told his nutritionist, you keep that and bring it back to me when we hit eight. And it’s, it’s not that far away.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Oh no, no, it’s, it’s definitely not. It was interesting. You, you’re hitting a really good topic because, I have a slide deck that I use to illustrate heifer inventory management and genetic progress that can be made within the female population outside of using bulls and genetics on the sires.
And it even has in there that this dairy, you know, made this amount of progress and at the end of 2021, they were shipping 6.4 pounds of solids. And I was using it in a presentation and somebody goes, “Oh, Well, they’re not that good.” And I’m like… Well, you know, it, it is, it’s, it’s a statement that we’re really accelerating that genetics and the way that nutrition amplifies or expresses that genetics.
So it’s a really great time to be in the dairy industry if we can, you know, make it to the other side of some of the other issues that we’re always forced with, with managing, you know?
Scott Zehr
Yeah. So Kevin, on the topic of cow longevity. I liked your analogy, genetics is the engine, right? And I, I view nutrition obviously as the fuel for that. What are two or three traits, genetic selection traits, that we should really be focusing on to have these long, longer living cows?
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Yeah. So that’s an awesome question because I was over the weekend here. I’ve been working on an index that, that I’m putting together for a pretty large progressive dairy. And their, their index is extremely health tree focused. And there’s pros and cons to that.
The pros of course are the benefits of, of the longevity health effects benefits. But we also have to remember that those traits that are typically in those types of indices are lower heritability traits. And not to say they’re incorrect. But they’re, they’re, you got to balance.
And I think we always have to remember that the traits that are extremely measurable farm to farm, like milk, fat and protein, you know, have extreme heritabilities because, you know, we can measure them and we can, we can remove as much of variance that’s associated with management farm to farm.
And when we’re talking about overall health, I think the primary trade is productive life. Productive life is tied to so many of those other traits. You know, it starts out as a, a multi trait, almost like its own index, taking into account, you know product production and fertility and longevity.
But then as animals get longer or older and they go into the data, it’s sheerly on months of stayability. So, you know, productive life is definitely the measure that encompasses all. When we look at other, other trades like livability, like, like productive life is a measurement of direct events of soul, you know, how animals are, are leaving the herd.
So it takes into account cows that leave for low production, cows that leave for hoof health, cows that leave for repro, you name it, utter health, etc. When we get into livability, livability is actually the diet events.
Scott Zehr
Right.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
So there is a little bit of a distinction. But livability is part of productive life because if an animal leaves, whether it be on a truck or, or not, you know, it’s, it’s part of that measure.
So sometimes folks will count both of those traits heavily. And what happens is we’re almost double counting because they’re highly correlated to one another. So I think though, backing up a little bit, productive life, livability, and the right weighting, and also your fertility traits.
Cow conception rate is probably the trait that’s got the most application to our U.S. dairy population today. DPR has got a little bit of noise because of the changing metrics of voluntary waiting period. And how, how we get cows bred has changed immensely over the last five to seven years.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. Wow.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
So, you know, one thing that as we’re discussing this and I’m saying it out loud, that we always have to remember is these traits are real world.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Like, they’re not some, you know, some people think genomics is just like somebody, some data scientists pulling a number out of a hat and throwing it on a piece of paper and man, all of the phenotypes that our industry has generated, it has made genomics powerful.
Scott Zehr
Right
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Like that ability to record sold events, diet events, reproductive efficiency, conception rate, milk, fat, and protein is the reason we have those genetic parameters and we can change them because we can quote unquote measure it. And, and that’s really, really the key part to it. So those would be the traits, you know, that I think could be primary to why cows can last longer, for sure.
Scott Zehr
I liked the fact that you threw in cow conception right there, because it’s, you know, it comes back to, at the end of the day, you know, as much as a dairy farmer is in the business of producing milk and producing solids and selling solids, it all happens with a pregnancy.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Sure.
Scott Zehr
And none of it happens without a pregnancy, right? So I always I always like to view reproduction, or the repro program as, think of the, the wheel with spokes, right? And you got a hub in the middle and, everything is the farm, but repro has to be the hub. Cause really it’s, in my opinion, it’s what drives, drives everything else, right?
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Oh, without, without question. Yeah.
Scott Zehr
So, Kevin so why is it important for producers to manage their genetics?
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
It’s their future. I mean, I kind of said it in one of the answers, and I think this is an aspect that doesn’t get triggered as much as it should on farm. We all talk about bulls and genetics and what semen, you know, type and, and genetics should be used and…
Scott Zehr
Almost, almost ad nauseum. Because it’s only 50 percent of the conversation.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Yeah. And, and what really should be talked about more and more is female selection. Like the dairies out there that we were talking about that are doing seven pounds of solids that are managing cull rates. And I’m going to say this a little different, choosing their cull rates.
Like there’s dairies out there that have cull rates and they manage around their cull rate. There’s dairies out there that choose what their cull rate is going to be because they can. And that is a key factor. And when you do that, these herds put a lot more emphasis on female selection, deciding who has the earned the right to make a future herd replacement based on both their genetics and the performance that’s associated with that genetics.
And so if we can measure the genetic component of that female side of selection, you know, the average industry generational or annual, I should say, increase in net merit dollars is around $70. We’ll use that as a simple number. And these herds that are both using good genetics on the sire side, but also putting restrictions on which females get sex semen and are using sex semen to you know, create those replacements.
I mean, they’re seeing a hundred to 150 net merit at dollar gains each year. And, you know, it’s like I, I work with a 5,000 cow dairy, no commercial or no registered cows on the farm. They don’t market, they don’t do anything. IBF embryo transfer work, none of that. And they genomic test every female born and their average, I mean average Scott average net merit that they’re getting back every week is like 950 to 9.
Three weeks ago, they hit 996 for their average. And they’re seeing that performance. You know, that’s, that’s the key is the genetic number has to be like, you know, whatever in unless you’re seeing it. And I think the key is you see it like there’s too many dairies out there that just manage cows.
And they don’t think about what their cows are doing, like what their makeup of those cows are. But those herds that get it, like when you go farm to farm, that’s the differentiating factor. Without question. And you try to explain it to one and you’re like, yeah, this is what these guys do and they’ll go, yeah, I can’t get my mind around it and I’m like, yeah, it’s, it’s okay. But know that those guys are hoping you don’t get it. I don’t mean that in a mean way, but that’s the reality.
Scott Zehr
No, it is. And when you, when you visualize that, when I visualize it in my mind, when you say go farm to farm, like, you know, like you, I get on a lot of farms. And you, you totally, like it stands out like a sore thumb. It’s unbelievable. You know, we have a, we have a little saying at, at, at Agrarian and it’s, it’s defend and protect.
So defend that cow. Protect your genetic investment. And, you know, that’s, that’s really what we mean by it. And yeah, I think that feel free I don’t think we have a trademark yet, so you might want to. But yeah, I mean, that’s wow. You know, when it comes down to, right, it’s, it’s not really some secret magic potion that’s going to make these cows last longer, Kevin.
I’m going to actually tease the next episode with you and say, a lot of it has to do with that picture above my left shoulder of Vince Lombardi. And I’m going to dive into that a little bit. It’ll be a little bit repetitive for some folks, but I don’t think we can keep talking about some of this stuff enough.
Well, Kevin, I think you’ve given us a lot of stuff to think about today. As far as, the role that genetics plays. But, in a follow up episode, we’re going to dive into, more on the management side. But how do we manage the program itself? And so, I appreciate you taking time today and we’ll be talking again on the next episode in the future. So Kevin, thank you.
Dr. Kevin Ziemba
Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Scott Zehr
All right. Thanks everybody. We’ll see you in two weeks.
