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SW Wisconsin | That's a nice theory, as long as everybody does it just enough to maintain herd numbers. As soon as somebody gets greedy and decides to expand using sexed semen it screws with the market. With conventional semen it takes about 2.5 calves for a cow to replace herself, which puts her about 4 years old on average. Not coincidentally, we've bred cows that last about 4-4.5 years on average. With sexed semen a cow will replace herself in about 1.2-1.3 calves, but the cow lasts just as long, meaning she replaces herself 1.5-2 times, and the dairy herd expands to match. Not everybody has to do it to really screw things up. Sexed semen is the reason that heifers are cheap, and the reason for low milk prices from 2015-2019. | |
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Dairy Springers
