DAIRY farmers like the McInnes brothers are looking at ways to diversify their businesses by keeping male and surplus female calves and raising them for meat products.
Traditionally these calves are managed through early slaughter in the form of at birth euthanasia or processed through abattoirs as bobby calves.
This typically occurs when the calves are between five and 30 days old.
Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) have been investigating the development of a viable dairy beef supply chain, one that will add substantial value to dairy steers commonly sold into lower value markets.
In 2021 an MLA project led by Charles Sturt University studied the impact of genetics, nutrition and management on the performance and eating quality of beef from dairy breeds.
Outcomes confirmed quality of dairy beef was of a standard equal to traditional beef.
Duncan, Ross and Morris McInnes are generational dairy farmers, their Scottish grandparents John and Elizabeth started the dairy more than 100 years ago.
Their farm’s name is Inverclyde and it comprises 500 hectares in Radford, a rural locality within the Scenic Rim.
It is here that around 400 Friesian dairy cows are milked within the farm’s herringbone milking shed.
This was the way the McInnes’ did business and had done for generations until last year when a decision was made to diversify.
“Last year was the first time we went into it by a large degree,” Ross McInnes said of a decision to hold back surplus calves.
“We ran some Angus bulls with the heifers and used some Angus semen on the herd.                                                                                                                                                                “I suppose it’s a vexed question because you’ve got a responsibility to an animal from a welfare point of view, where you’d keep a calf for five days at least before it's sold.                    “But then you end up with a situation of untapped potential, you have a lot of animals, but they need to attract a butcher or a buyer for the carcass to make the whole exercise worthwhile.”
He said if farmers were having a dry season or the market was down, making a profit from straight dairy cattle carcass was difficult to achieve.
“The growth rate in a Friesian is not that much different to the crossbreeds,” he said.
“But while the carcass weight is similar, the percentage of meat surrounding it is more when it’s an Angus or Charolais.
“And that’s the quandary ... what is the best way to do it?
“Another issue facing farmers is resources and facilities because when you are talking about doubling the number of young calves you carry, a lot of pressure is put on your infrastructure.”
He said services like contract rearing of calves were handy for dairy farmers who had land and facility restrictions.
“This year we will be looking at using completely sexed semen for our dairy breeding and everything else will be a beef cross, with the majority being an Angus cross,” he said.
“I think if you use Angus cross you have a lot more opportunity for profit than a straight Friesian.
“I also think from an animal welfare and community perspective, it’s the right way to go because no one likes to see bull calves slaughtered.
“If there is potential to grow those animals out into a sellable product, that’s a win, win situation.”
Mr McInnes said he kept a hundred Angus cross cattle back last year, as well as a few Speckle Parks and Wagyu.
“Last year was the first time we really did it and we are just starting to calve again now,” he said.
“We have seven Angus cross heifers in the pens with the Friesians.
“If we’d sold them all off six months ago it would have been a really good income stream but we wanted to grow them out to see how they went, and prices crashed around the same time.
“I am confident the Angus cross are profitable, but I doubt the straight dairy ones will be, you’ve got to have a lot of things on your side for that to happen.”
He said turning dairy cattle into a beef income stream only worked if three key elements were in place.
“You need the right breed, the facilities to do it and the nutrition an animal needs to reach a weight that’s profitable,” he said.
“The process of getting animals to this point can be costly.
“The first one we killed had a live weight of around 480 kilograms after 300 days.
“Compare that to our dairy heifers, the Friesians, and we’d see them growing at around 0.8 of a kilogram a day.
“The Angus cross steers grow at 1.5 Friesians a day.“We usually aim at growing our Friesian heifers a minimum of 350 kilograms, and that’s at around 14 or 15 months in age.
“The Angus cross were 480 kilograms at 10 months old.”
He said the biggest cost was maintaining the herd.
“With dairy cows the first seven or eight kilos you feed them doesn’t return a single litre of milk, it’s just what they need to stay alive, to exist,” he said.
“To maintain cows for meat we’d need to ensure the cost of maintenance was well under cost of carcass and meat.”