|
Madison Co. Virginia | Suppose you sold all your calves at weaning age. Heifers, bulls, Jerseys, Angus-crosses, all of them. You would try to maximize the value of those animals being sold, so you would breed accordingly. When you need replacement heifers, you would buy springers on the open market. If everyone was doing this, the value and quantity of heifers would balance out nicely using supply and demand.
But how is this any different than what we have now, where many farms raise their own replacements? There's very little difference in total rearing cost vs market value. If you told any individual farm that they couldn't use sexed semen, but they wanted to expand anyway, the slight additional cost of buying heifers won't make any difference in their decision to do so. | |
|
Question for dairy farmers on cattle breeding
