Beef on Dairy Crossbreds

Morgan Vincent

Hey everyone, welcome back to Educators Empowering Educators. I'm Morgan Vincent, and today we are going to talk about the progeny from dairy farms. As someone who to this day still drinks a gallon of milk a week, I think this is a very exciting topic. I want to introduce my guest, Dr. Tara Felix, a professor and E 3 chief scientist.

Tara Felix

Hey Morgan, thanks for having me! I am ready to get right into it.

Morgan Vincent

Sure, let's do it!

Tara Felix

So I can pretty much guarantee if you’ve been to a dairy farm in the last three or four years, especially in Pennsylvania, you’ve seen way more black calves running around than you used to. I mean, it’s kind of stunning how quickly this beef on dairy thing has taken over, especially here in the Northeast.

Morgan Vincent

Dr. Felix, before we get too far, can you tell me exactly what you mean by beef on dairy?

Tara Felix

Oh absolutely! Beef on dairy refers to the practice of using beef semen to breed dairy cows to produce crossbred calves that have desirable beef traits. Ideally, you are getting more meat out of every animal.

Morgan Vincent

Great, now let's get back to what you were saying before. The amount of black calves is increasing, which means the number of beef on dairy cows is increasing?

Tara Felix

Yes! We used to have conversations with folks where they’d say, “Oh, I just have Holstein bull calves, they’re not worth much,” and now suddenly, those same producers are strategizing which cows to pair with beef semen to get a premium on the resulting calves.

Morgan Vincent

Yeah, I’ve actually seen the numbers from your 2023 survey, where almost 77% of farms in the region are already using beef semen or at least planning to. And it sounds one driver is purely economic. And honestly, who can ignore those beef calf prices when the market supports it? I mean if the prices were a problem in 2023, imagine at this moment in 2025! But Dr. Felix, was there a moment for you when you realized “wow, this isn’t just a trend, it’s a real management shift?”

Tara Felix

Oh, definitely. Each year the National Association of Animal Breeders publishes data on semen sales. After the data were published in 2018, the trend was pretty clear, but the consistem year-over-year increases since are what has really confirmed a management shift. To date, there have been a 350% increase in domestic beef semen sales nationwide since we first started seeing these black calves hit the ground. It is pretty clear at this point that beef on dairy is not going to reverse. In the field, the big change was producers calling up and saying, “Who do I breed to? My sales rep says get Angus, but does it really matter?” The conversations turned from ‘beef calves are worth pennies’ to ‘how do I get the most out of each one.’ It’s reshaped how dairies decide which heifers to keep, how to use of sexed semen, really the whole playbook.

Morgan Vincent

And the Northeast is unique, right? Smaller dairies and less access to calf ranches. Still, even here, folks have adopted this at pace. There is a balance: moving surplus calves up the value chain, but also sometimes still treating them like byproducts. It seems like what you’re describing is a system in flux. Classrooms can use this as a prime example of how an agriculture industry responds to market signals and technology at the same time.

Morgan Vincent

So, let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of it: selecting beef sires for dairy cows. Your survey found most producers in the Northeast were using advice from semen sales reps and price as the main criteria, but not a lot of expected progeny differences, a prediction of how an animal's future offspring will perform compared to another animal of the same breed, or custom indices. And, overwhelmingly, Angus was the go-to.

Tara Felix

Right, and I want to emphasize, almost 90% of folks named Angus as their main beef breed. But when you dig into larger dairies, you start seeing Charolais, Limousin, Simmental creep in. The reality is, for most smaller operations, the cost drives a lot of decisions, and there just isn’t widespread adoption yet of customized beef on dairy indices in the U.S. the way, say, Ireland does it. Over there, they’ve got national indices the help producers select which beef sires to breed with dairy, weighing calving ease, carcass weight, growth, and a host of profitability traits. The Angus association published these indices in 2019, but dairy producers still rely heavily on semen company reps.

Morgan Vincent

It seems like maybe the challenge is, producers need more tools to match beef genetics to their dairy herds’ actual strengths and weaknesses. Can you share an example where a shift in crossbreeding strategy was a game-changer?

Tara Felix

The main game changer has been the economic incentives. Dairies are now reliant on a decent chunk of their income coming from what they dub the “surplus calves”, which are largely beef on dairy. These calves now represent 50 to 60% of the calves born on larger dairies. AND, not only have these breeding decisions increased the surplus calf value but the more intentional breeding strategies have increased the net merit of the dairy heifers born on farms making tighter calls too.

Morgan Vincent

Now, once those beef on dairy calves are weaned, it seems like management really diverges. Can you highlight some differences in how yearling-fed versus calf-fed dairy and crossbred cattle perform in the feedlot?

Tara Felix

Yes, and the main point is that straightbred dairy steers and beef on dairy are not the same proposition. Two traditional terms exist in conventional fed beef cattle systems: Calf-fed steers which are weaned fed grain-based diets from weaning all the way through the feedlot; whereas yearlings would enter the feedlot at a year of age to start a grain-based diet but be fed a forage diet prior to that in what we call the backgrounding phase. Most purebred Holstein steers would have gone through a system when they were weaned at 6 or 7 weeks of age and ed grain-based diets until harvest. There are still A LOT of questions surrounding beef on dairy and whether or not they need grain all the way to finish or if we can feed them, like conventional beef cattle, with more forages during a backgrounding phase to enter the feedlots as yearlings. For beef on dairy, there’s also a lot of potential for higher average daily gains if you implement the right technology. Growth-promoting technologies like implants and beta-agonists, can close some of the muscle and carcass yield gaps to native beef, but there’s nuance. Jaborek’s paper as well as work by Wesley and colleagues point to factors like starting weight, early-life management, and timing of implants all influencing performance and even carcass quality.

Morgan Vincent

And there’s still a huge research gap around early calfhood management and its impact on later performance, right? Like, colostrum, weaning age, grain versus forage? Those factors are major but not consistently tracked or reported.

Tara Felix

You nailed it. Honestly, we probably have the genetics pretty dialed in at this point and we spend a lot of time optimizing finishing diets. We need to do a better job understanding how what happened in the first two, or even 6, months of life can impact the final product which is ultimately beef. The downstream effects of colostrum, weaning strategies, even the inclusion of hay or the type of starter grain, those are big unknowns in beef on dairy science. There’s opportunity here for both research and classroom case studies, how what happens on day one might affect a steer’s entire economic trajectory.

Morgan Vincent

Let’s dig into breed differences because the Basiel 2024 trial added a ton of clarity on this. They finished steers sired by Angus, Charolais, Limousin, Hereford, Red Angus, Simmental, and Wagyu out of Holstein dams, all managed under similar conditions. What they found was pretty striking: Angus, Charolais, and Simmental sired steers outpaced Wagyu and Limousin for average daily gains by as much as 26%. Wagyu and Limousin were also on feedweeks longer, a real cost when you consider feed and time.

Tara Felix

Bailey Basiel was a Penn State PHD student really at the forefront of these questions. She chose each sire in that study based off of specific expected progeny differences, or EPDs, we mentioned earlier. My main takeaway from her study is that it is really about the characteristics of each individual bull more than any specific breed.

Morgan Vincent

Well that’s a goldmine for exploring genetic progress and market shifts, right?

Tara Felix

The genetics companies have run with this and since 2022, the largest growth in semen sales has been the supply of heterospermic beef semen to target genetics that align with the terminal outcomes desired for beef on dairy progeny. The industry and companies that supply it have total had to rethink breed selection as the market shifts toward beef on dairy.

Morgan Vincent

And it’s a great place for the next generation to dive in: with real data, real-world implications, and a big “it depends” on what trait you value most.

Morgan Vincent

With all this focus on genetics and performance, wasn’t it only about 60% of farms reporting they actually feed colostrum to beef on dairy calves in 2023? And from what I know, most calves are sold before they hit a week old. That must have implications downstream for health, risk, and feedlot performance, right?

Tara Felix

Absolutely. It’s kind of a critical point: the majority of beef on dairy calves are leaving dairies before they’d even show the effects of early-life nutrition or immunity. Most farms sell them at a few days old, and only about half report consistent colostrum feeding. When you factor the lack of standardization throughout the rest of the system—hay versus none, starter type, waste milk versus milk replacer—it’s all over the board. You run into big variability. There's a real risk that poor early-life care, even if you buy high-value genetics, could undermine all those feedlot and carcass gains.

Morgan Vincent

So the science suggests, you can select the “right” bull, but if your management up front isn’t good, the steer’s potential is lost before it hits the feedlot. Sounds like a huge opportunity for research and education alike.

Tara Felix

Yes, and this gives us a critical message: profitable systems aren’t just about the right breed or the right diet at the bunk. System-wide outcomes depend on all links being strong: from colostrum through weaning, to the finish. Honestly, if you’re a teacher, that’s a great place for student debate, scenario-building, and problem-solving projects. I know my students really get into these kinds of things because they really matter!

Morgan Vincent

Now let’s talk about health in the feedlot. Wesley and colleagues evaluated over 6,000 beef on dairy steers and focused on different implant strategies. What did they find?

Tara Felix

They found the overall feedlot performance and carcass traits didn’t change much with different hormonal implant scenarios, except for some effects on marbling and buller rate. But the big concern? Over 60% of these steers had liver abscesses at slaughter.

Morgan Vincent

Wow, 60%? That seems pretty high, and honestly like it could cause a string of other problems.

Tara Felix

Yeah, this is honestly one of the most persistent headaches in dairy-influenced cattle. Dairy genetics have liver abscess risk than beef steers, even with antibiotic inclusion in the diet, like tylosin. It’s partly about longer days on feed, but also likely management. Economically, abscesses mean more trim, condemned livers, potential animal welfare issues, and big dollars lost. And we still don’t have clear best practices for minimizing those rates or predicting which animals are most at risk, especially in these crossbred populations.

Morgan Vincent

So it seems like the research teams are staring down a lot of open questions: is it the feeding program? Breed effect? Duration? We know there’s a problem, but we’re far from solving it, and the cost and welfare implications are only growing as beef on dairy cattle numbers rise.

Tara Felix

: Yeah, absolutely. One of the really fascinating things about this topic is that liver abscess occurrence is regional, in the Northeast, in my research, we don’t have many at all! This is also what makes my field so exciting. I am at the forefront of discovery of things that influence life everyday!

Morgan Vincent

As we wrap up, Dr. Felix, I want to connect this all back to real-world profitability. Since most dairies are still selling beef on dairy calves before one week of age, how do those profits compare to other calve strategies?

Tara Felix

Most dairies continue to sell those calves but there is a real lack of education and decision making tools around retail price, what it should be and how to optimize it at every point of sale. Most of these beef on dairy calves may be sold 3 or 4 times in their life; AND, not “but,” industry-wide traceability and data sharing are lacking, so best-practices don’t always cascade through the system. There’s a real opportunity for teachers and extension educators to connect students with these big questions. For example, how does a Northeast dairy’s decision ripple down to the steak in a midwestern supermarket?

Morgan Vincent

I always tie things not only to Pennsylvania or the United States, but how could these trends and discoveries effect other places around the globe? I come back to Uganda my time in Uganda, where I taught agriculture for a month and visited many schools and homes. Families often can not afford to have multiple cows, so they do their very best to get as much out of what they have. If a cow could produce milk and eventually be processed into food, I think this would be a great win. My point is that these are not just “farm” problems, they’re global agriculture systems lessons. Today, we can see how the science of beef on dairy is opening doors for teachers and producers alike to empower the next generation of agriculturalists.

Tara Felix

And, as we eldued to, around the world many countries have been attempting to optimize beef on dairy for decades. There is a lot we could learn from them! And I’d say to anyone listening, whether you’re a teacher, a student, or a producer: don’t just look at the latest breed chart, but ask the whole-system questions. That’s what moves both the industry and the classroom forward. Thanks for the discussion, Morgan.

Morgan Vincent

Thank you, Dr. Felix. I always walk away from these with my wheels turning, excited to see what comes next. Alright folks, that’s it for today’s episode of Educators Empowering Educators, but stick with us for more deep dives into science meeting the classroom.

Tara Felix

Bye Morgan! And thanks everyone for joining us, keep the questions coming! I look forward to working with you.