Ferme Gillette’s co-owner Eric Patenaude say his dairy herd produces about 150 hybrid-Angus animals annually.
Eastern Ontario farmers impregnate dairy cows with beef semen and embryos
Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum
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.”
Using beef semen the Ferme Gillette dairy herd produces about 150 hybrid-Angus animals annually. About 120 of those are finished at the farm — 10 a month — with the balance shipped as calves into the Select Sires’ beef program. Ferme Gillette now owns Chesterville-area slaughterhouse, Henderson Meats, to process its own brand of meat and steaks from the Angus-Holstein crosses. The farm partnered with two other buyers to acquire Henderson Meats in 2021 but became sole owner this year after hog producer Golden Rail Farms of Finch and Ottawa Valley Meats sold their shares.
Patenaude said their beef — branded under the Gillette name — has proven “extremely popular” in his local community. “My wife Marie-Lou has been doing a great job moving beef through our Facebook page @marchéfermegillette, and everyone at the farm is also pulling their weight selling beef here and there,” he said, noting that half- and full-beef carcasses are selling well. “We’ve had a few restaurants come on board with our products, and we’re also working on a few different projects to move more beef in the future,” he said.
Breeding dairy cattle to beef bulls has been a growing industry trend for several years. Where more than 99% of Holstein cows were once bred to Holstein bulls, that number dropped to 89% in 2019, according to an ag media report.
The Indian River Cattle Company beef breeder Billy Elmhirst observed that dairy cattle also offer the innate advantage of higher fertility rates. They get pregnant more easily than their full-blooded beef sisters, he said, which makes the Holstein cow an even more valuable surrogate for beef production.
Osgoode dairy farmer Steven Velthuis suggested the trend of producing dairy-beef cows could drop off with a rise in the value of dairy cattle amid high milk prices in the United States and higher demand for milk in Canada.
At the very least, he suggested that some dairy producers who may be dedicating up to 30 % of their pregnancies to beef crosses will back that off to, say, 15 or 20 %.
“We need more animals making more milk right now,” explained Velthuis, who produces beef animals from his dairy cows — though he uses them as surrogates to carry purebred Wagyu and Angus embryos to term.
While cross-bred beef calves might currently fetch $300 or $400 more per animal for the dairy farmer dabbling in the market with young stock, Velthuis suggested that raising a dairy calf into a replacement cow worth about $3,000 might be the better play today.
He suggested that dairy producers theoretically had the capacity to “devastate” Ontario’s traditional beef producers, though Beef Farmers of Ontario President Jack Chaffe doesn’t see it that way. Nor did he see any tension between traditional beef producers and dairy farmers that produce beef as a sideline in a free market.
Chaffe pointed out that dairy-cross beef animals are a little different than purebred beef and that there are “advantages and disadvantages” to them.
“A lot of times they’ll marble up easier than a straight beef animal and have less fat cover,” he said. He also said that the risk of the dairy-beef market is that dairy farmers can get in and get out quickly, which is not ideal for processors who expect constant supply.
But if the number of available dairy-beef animals dropped, the feedlots would have to bid higher to buy regular beef calves instead, Chaffe observed, though he didn’t see the hybrids as currently depressing beef prices.
