EMBRUN — Sexed semen technology allows Ontario’s dairy herds to produce hybrid beef cattle but the technology can be a double-edged sword.
When the wide availability of sexed semen increased the odds of producing female dairy animals, it reduced genetic sales from the highly respected dairy herd at Ferme Gillette in Embrun. But at the same time, the technology made possible Ferme Gillette’s jump into hybrid beef production in a big and expanding way — a move that also satiated co-owner Eric Patenaude’s appetite for better beef on his own dinner plate.
Patenaude said the idea of raising beef came up after the death of his grandfather, Gilles, about about six years ago. His late grandfather always carried out the common dairy farm tradition of supplying the family with meat from “let’s say, not always the best” milk cow, he conceded. “After he passed, I told my uncle Louis, I’m tired of eating old Holstein cull cows. I want to get an Angus beef animal, raise it and eat it.”
Not long afterward, his uncle learned about the trend of using dairy cows to make beef animals from Dwayne Hartle of ST Genetics. The farm had a way forward. Patenaude would have plenty of Angus beef for his barbecue while forging new opportunities.
Holstein calves “weren’t selling for much at that time, and also sexed semen had really changed the game as far as selling genetics went,” Patenaude recalled. “The embryo market and artificial insemination bull market had really slowed down, so Louis saw this as an opening to gain back some of the revenue that we had lost with that market.”
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