Unlocking Profit Potential: Beef-on-Dairy Is Gaining Momentum

Crossing beef cattle with dairy cattle is nothing new, but in recent years, industry professionals have been working to help dairy farmers select beef genetics that produce profitable “beef-on-dairy” cattle.

“When the dairy industry first started doing beef-on-dairy, it was just, ‘Give me a black bull,’” said David Erf, a U.S. dairy technical service geneticist with Zoetis. “There was no concern about the quality of the beef carcass. The attitude was, ‘Anything is going to be better than a purebred Holstein bull.’”

In recent years, crossbreeding beef sires with dairy cows has gained popularity as an extra value-added income for most dairy farmers. According to the National Association of Animal Breeders (NAAB), domestic beef units used on dairies increased by nearly 1 million units in 2023. The change in 2024, albeit much smaller, was an increase of 14,000 units. 

Breeding dairy beef has become more cost-efficient than breeding replacement heifers, said Andrew Greenleaf, a Select Sires reproductive specialist.

Most of Greenleaf’s customers in Berks, Chester, and Lancaster counties in Pennsylvania said purchasing replacement heifers is more economical than raising their own. Greenleaf said the drivers behind that have been high feed costs and tighter milk prices.

“Some dairy farmers can get twice as much money for an Angus cross than a purebred Holstein bull calf,” Greenleaf said.

About 99% of Greenleaf’s customers choose semen from an Angus bull, such as Hoffman Stagecoach, a moderate-size black Angus bull with high performance traits in calving ease and weaning weight. Stagecoach also has high fertility rates and is cost-effective.

“I am seeing dairies doing beef-on-dairy crosses, looking more at the genetics of the beef bulls they’re using. So they are making sure they are selecting a bull with a big ribeye, all those great carcass and growth traits from an average daily gain advantage,” said Erf.

What Breed Is the Better Beef Bull?

Recently, researchers at Penn State stepped in to help dairy farmers become more genetically efficient raising dairy beef crosses with a study investigating the genetics of beef-sired steers born to Holstein cows.

Tara Felix, an associate professor and the study’s principal researcher, completed a three-year trial comparing feedlot performance and carcass characteristics of beef-on-dairy Holstein steers by breed. 

The trial used calves born to Holstein dams sired by seven beef cattle breeds: Angus, Charolais, Limousin, Hereford, Red Angus, Simmental, and Wagyu. The results of the study were published in the journal Translational Animal Science in March 2024.

Here are the major takeaways from the study: 

• Steers sired by all breeds except for Limousin had greater average daily gain than Wagyu-sired steers.
• Angus-sired steers had an 8.6% greater average daily gain than Red Angus-sired steers.
• Angus, Charolais, and Simmental-sired steers had greater average daily gain than Limousin-sired steers.
• Wagyu-sired steers spent 5-26 more days on feed than steers sired by Limousin, Simmental, Angus, and Charolais.
• Angus and Charolais-sired steers were on feed for 19 and 21 days fewer, respectively, than Limousin-sired steers.
• Although carcasses were similar across breeds, Red Angus, Angus, and Charolais-sired steers had the greatest marbling scores, whereas Simmental and Limousin-sired steers had the least marbling.
• Angus, Hereford, and Limousin-sired steers produced the most tender beef, whereas Simmental-sired steers produced the least tender beef.

“Of particular note are the deficiencies of the Waygu-sired steers in this study,” said Felix. “Similar reductions in growth have been observed in Wagyu-sired progeny born to both native beef and dairy dams.”

Ultimately, Felix concluded from the results of her study that “when appropriate bull selection standards are applied and progeny are grown and managed similarly, breed had relatively little influence on feedlot growth performance and carcass outcomes.” 

She added, “Additional data collection should be attempted on a larger industry-wide scale to corroborate these findings.”

Revolutionizing Beef-on-Dairy Genetics

Jerry Wulf is part of a team that has dairy and beef operations in multiple states and works to optimize the genetics of beef and dairy cattle.

Wulf Cattle began more than 50 years ago, selling Limousin and “LimFlex” — an Angus hybrid — seedstock. The operation works with both beef and dairy animals and has a system called “Breeding to Feeding” that focuses on joining the genetics of dairy and feeder cattle.

The program starts with a female Limousin from the Wulf herd, and the prospective sires are evaluated on a sire inventory index. They select genetic lines that are predicted to perform the best on feedyards and in dairies, and the bulls are evaluated every 30 days for fertility. A bull must pass three rounds of fertility testing to become an approved “Breeding to Feeding” sire.

“Not just any beef bull will flip a dairy cow,” said Wulf. “The major problem with the straight dairy animal is its lack of muscle and poor carcass confirmation. We’re able to put some product on the carcass to give it some rib eye and a nice size.”

The timeline for Wulf Cattle’s genetics development dates back to 2009, when it began using sexed dairy semen and conventional semen to create replacement animals for their herd. The first “BeefBuilders” — what Wulf calls the beef and dairy hybrids — were developed in 2012. By 2017, Wulf Cattle had developed its “Breeding to Feeding” evaluation to predict the phenotype likelihood of offspring.

Wulf Cattle sells to multiple packers and collects carcass information from them about the beef-on-dairy cattle after they are harvested. Wulf said it is critical to evaluate carcass information so they can keep improving the genetics and the process.

From the perspective of the packing industry, Glen Dolezal said that while there are several advantages about these cattle, there is also room for improvement.

Dolezal, assistant vice president of new technology for Cargill Protein, pointed out several strengths.

• More sustainable beef production than with purebred dairy steers
• High percentage of black-hided animals
• High percentage of prime, premium, and choice cuts
• Impressive beef tenderness equivalent to native cattle
• Fewer yield grade 4s and 5s on the USDA yield grading scale
• Improved muscling/rib eye area vs. dairy steers
• Higher yields than purebred dairy steers
• More moderate in frame size

In terms of opportunities for improvement, Dolezal noted that beef-on-dairy cattle tend to have more product lost in slaughter than native beef cattle. Abscessed livers, gut loss, and loss of outside skirts were significantly higher in beef-on-dairy cattle, resulting in less marketable product.

“One plant had to condemn 76,000 outside skirts, which is typically meat used in fajitas, because an abscessed liver was attached to them. That’s $2 million that the producer and Cargill lost in value,” Dolezal said. “It’s also when general managers started calling and saying, ‘We have an opportunity to fix this.’”

Kelli Retallick, president of Angus Genetics, said this type of breeding is a way to create a solution for issues that exist in the cattle industry.

She compared it to laying hens. The commercial value of a spent laying hen has long been considered negligible. Hens at the end of their laying life have been considered a by-product of the egg industry, unlike broilers that are raised for meat. Now, laying hens are being crossbred to broiler chickens. This crossbreeding adds more meat to the hen so that it can be used as a source of meat at the end of its laying years.

Ultimately, the goal of beef-on-dairy cattle is to add muscle to a dairy calf without adding stress to its life cycle or quality of life. Retallick said that just like beef producers, dairy producers don’t want to pull a calf, so it’s important to make sure this trend does no harm to the dairy female or resulting calf in the way of a hard birthing event.

Dairy Beef Helps the Beef Supply Chain

As consumer demand for beef increases and the average number of beef cattle in feedlots dwindles, beef packers are leaning more on the dairy industry to supplement supplies. “Feedlots are more seasonal, and dairy herds are not. Dairy beef calves can flow through feedlots year round,” said Erf.

Dairy-bred fed slaughter in the United States has reached more than 4 million head annually, according to a recent report from CoBank, and half of those animals are beef-on-dairy cattle. 

According to the report, in March 2024, USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service began to track the “dairy/beef” category of cattle sold at auction in addition to “beef” and “dairy” categories. 

Abbi Prins, an industry analyst in CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange research division, said, “While the data series is still relatively young and thin because not all cattle move through livestock auctions, dairy appears to not only be benefiting from strong beef demand but also contributing to higher cattle prices overall.”

Auction prices for dairy-beef feeder cattle averaged $216/hundredweight (cwt), slightly higher than dairy ($208/cwt) but notably lower than native beef feeder cattle ($253/cwt). 

On the other hand, auction prices for dairy-beef slaughter cattle were virtually equal to those of beef. Dairy-beef slaughter cattle prices at auction averaged $175/cwt; beef slaughter cattle prices averaged $176/cwt. Dairy slaughter cattle averaged much lower: $150/cwt.

In that case, dairy-beef cattle retain the most value when comparing feeder cattle auction price to slaughter cattle auction price on a price-per-hundredweight basis, according to the CoBank report. 

• Dairy-beef animals retain 81.3% of their value.
• Dairy animals retain 72.1% of their value.
• Beef animals retain 69.6% of their value.

This is an important consideration for producers. According to Prins, “For feedlots, owning cattle that sustain their price value from feeder to slaughter is important for business financial health.”

Courtney Love and Madelyn Ostendorf also contributed to this article.