As a breeding company CRV wants to gain insight into the differences between animals and rations. With the knowledge from our studies, new solutions are developed that enable livestock farmers to improve feed efficiency of the herd and control methane emissions. An important starting point here is the efficient use of feed, or feed efficiency. This can save an average of 10% on feed costs.

Feed costs are about 60% of all variable costs to produce milk. Therefore, it is important to breed efficient cows that make better use of their feed to produce milk. In addition, more efficient use of feed also has a positive effect on the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and requiring fewer scarce resources.

As the first breeding organisation in the world, CRV invested in 2017 in collecting feed intake data from individual cows on commercial dairy farms. Since then, other breeding organisations have also become aware of the fact that feed efficiency will become increasingly important and have therefore also taken initiatives to be able to measure feed intake. So far, however, only on a limited scale.

10,600 feed intake data a day

Every day, CRV collects 10,600 feed intake data from lactating cows. This is done on 5 commercial and 5 research farms. It involves data from a total of 2,500 cows. The goal is to reduce feed costs for milk production by selecting cows with better feed efficiency.

Cows with high feed efficiency need less feed per kg of fat and protein corrected milk. On every farm, there is a lot of variation in feed efficiency between cows. There are cows that need 1kg dry matter feed to produce 1kg FPCM milk and there are cows that need only 1kg dry matter feed to produce 2kg FPCM milk. The 25% best cows for feed efficiency in the herd need a quarter less feed for the same amount of milk than the 25% least feed efficient cows. This means less feed and therefore less manure, but also less methane.

Big impact on the profitability of a dairy farm

With all this data, breeding values for feed efficiency are calculated. The highest bulls have a breeding value from 108 to 112 for feed efficiency. When bulls with an average of 108 feed efficiency are used, the daughters of these bulls will produce 4% more milk with the same amount of feed or require 4% less feed for the same amount of milk. On a dairy farm with 200 cows and an average milk production of 10,000kg of milk, this gives extra milk income of €40,000 a year at a milk price of 50 cents.

Feed Efficiency breeding value with high reliability

The collected feed intake data has already led to a reliable breeding value for feed efficiency. This has been calculated since December 2020. With the index run of December 2022, CRV already has 10,000 cows with feed intake data and therefore the largest reference population when it comes to feed intake data from individual lactating cows. On the 10 farms where the feed intake is measured, they are mainly daughters of CRV bulls. This means that the current proven bulls already have large numbers of daughters with feed intake data. This results in a breeding value for feed efficiency with high reliability for the proven bulls (see table 1).

Bull	Number of daughters	Breeding value Feed Efficiency (FE)	% reliability FE
W. Esperanto	73	110	80
D. Lendor	69	106	75
B. Final	64	103	82
D.W. Ranger	99	102	77
D.Jupiler	164	102	82
D. Magister	141	101	82
Rocky	52	95	80

 

Table 1:  Current CRV proven bulls with reliable Feed Efficiency breeding values

All the collected data is included in the reference population and ensures a reliability for feed efficiency by the young genomic bulls for about 50% and thus already gives a good prediction of the feed efficiency of the future daughters. In the coming years, the number of cows with feed intake data will only increase and with it the reliability. Through selection in CRV's breeding program, almost half of the bulls have a feed efficiency breeding value of 105 or higher.

Research on Methane

In addition to the data collected by CRV on feed efficiency a lot of research is being done on methane emissions. To do so, CRV has 3 projects running:

1. Measuring methane emissions on a feed intake test farm using Greenfeeds.
2. Measuring methane emissions on about 100 farms with a total of 15,000 cows using sniffers.
3. Research at young AI bulls using Greenfeeds to measure methane emissions.

All this data from the 5 feed intake farms and methane measurements provides an important contribution to the overall research into methane emissions. Methane emissions are expected to play an even greater role in the future.

Reliable breeding value Methane in 2025

Research has taught us that methane emissions from cows are about 30% heritable. We also see large differences between cows averaging 320 grams of methane per cow per day with a variation of 250 to about 400 grams per day. By breeding now with those animals that produce less methane, we expect to be able to reduce total methane emission by 1% per year. That doesn't seem much, but by 2050 that will be 25% less methane emissions. It is expected that this will result in a reliable breeding value for methane emissions by 2025.

Photography Credit @Jenny Wood Photography