The future of dairy-beef in cattle production

Abstract

Beef-on-dairy (BOD) cattle constitute a meaningful and grow­ing percentage of North American fed beef production. The transition to BOD programs by dairy producers has been fa­cilitated in part by sexed semen technologies, which may ulti­mately result in over 3.5 million BOD cattle entering the US fed beef supply on an annual basis. This class of cattle presents unique opportunities for vertical alignment of the value chain, but packer concerns remain about carcass conformation and consistency as well as liver abscess rates and precocious lacta­tion in BOD heifers. The future of BOD production will hinge on participants’ ability to efficiently distribute data and the associ­ated value up and down the BOD value chain.