Abstract

Dairy calves that are not required as herd replacements provide an opportunity for beef production with a relatively low environmental footprint. A telephone survey of 262 New Zealand dairy farmers was conducted in October 2020 to gain insight into current mating and calving practices, and attitudes to dairy-beef breeding and rearing calves for beef. This number of respondents provided a margin of error of ±6%. On average, per herd, 28% of calves were kept as dairy replacements, 12% were reared on-farm for beef, 15% sold for beef rearing, 35% sold to process as ‘bobby’ calves, 5% euthanised and 4% born dead or died. The largest barriers to producing more beef calves were uncertainty around their value, followed by calving difficulties with beef bulls. The main barrier to rearing more calves for beef was higher earnings for milk than for beef. However, 60% of respondents agreed that the sector should aim to decrease the number of ‘bobby’ calves. This survey provides data for the development of cross-sector initiatives to increase dairy-beef integration and the utilisation of calves. These results provide a rich description of the current state of the sector and they suggest that at least 74% of New Zealand beef production originates in the dairy industry. Keywords: dairy calf; dairy-beef; bobby calf; calf rearing; mating

JP, Edwards, S Cuthbert, JB Pinxterhuis, and A McDermott

New Zealand Journal of Animal Science and Production, Volume 81, Online, 179-185, 2021