Are you missing the biggest leap in dairy performance since the milking machine?



From fertility breakthroughs to Holsteins with 4.5% components/5% fat, today’s cows are not your grandparents’ cows.



In this episode of The Milk Check, we sit down with Nate Zwald, president and CEO of Progenco, to uncover how genetics is quietly reshaping the dairy industry.



We tackle:








Why genetic progress is accelerating and how that changes your herd strategy



The rise of gender-selected genetics and the fall of dairy bull calves



What makes a cow “better” — and how to breed more of them



Why embryo technology could be the next big leap




Listen now to the latest episode of The Milk Check to learn why cows engineered for fire in the belly could have improved lifespan, higher fertility, better fat composition and a better life.



Got questions?



Got questions for The Milk Check team? We've got answers. Submit your questions below and we'd be happy to get back to you or answer your question on the show.




Ask The Milk Check








Special Guest:




Nate Zwald, president and CEO of Progenco




The Jacoby Team:




Gus Jacoby, president, fluid dairy ingredients & dairy support



Mike Brown, vice president of dairy market intelligence



Ted Jacoby III, CEO & president, cheese, butter & dry ingredients












Intro (with music):



Welcome to The Milk Check, a podcast from T.C. Jacoby & Co., where we share market insights and analysis with dairy farmers in mind.



Ted Jacoby III:



Welcome, everybody, to the podcast. This month's version we have a special guest. We have Nate Zwald, former CEO of ABS Global and current president and CEO of Progenco. Joining us from the Jacoby team is Mike Brown, our VP of Market Intelligence, and Josh White, our VP of Dairy Ingredients. Nate, we've asked you on this podcast today because you're one of the foremost experts in bovine genetics out there, and we've been talking a lot about some of the changes in cow genetics and how it's been affecting our dairy markets. It's something we'd love to learn a lot more about. Why don't you start us off? Tell us a little about your background, and we'll go from there.



Nate Zwald:



Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, a pleasure to be here. I appreciate being asked and appreciate that introduction. I've had a long career in dairy genetics, starting with growing up on a farm and learning about dairy genetics from where it should be learned about, in a barn with my dad, thinking about milking cows and recognizing that the next generation of cows was going to be better than the current generation of cows. And that was a pretty fun thing to see firsthand. When you think about having a daughter of a cow out in the heifer yard, that's going to be better than the cow you're milking today. And I think that's the whole idea that we think about when we think about genetics is making better animals faster and trying always to make sure that the next generation is going to be more productive, healthier, happier, better for the farmers, better for the community, and better for the world and the next generation than the cows are in this generation.



And we've seen tremendous progress through time in doing that compared to when I was a kid milking cows thinking, "Hey, I hope the heifer is going to be better than the cow herself." Because here we are, we've gone through so many technologies like selection for fitness, longevity, and fertility, and then we went through genomic technology that's had a huge impact on the industry. And then more recently, sex semen and the use of beef on dairy cows have all had substantial changes to the genetic progress curve compared to what seems like not that long ago from my standpoint, just milking cows in the barn with dad.



Ted Jacoby III:



So, currently, what are some of the major trends in genetics that the dairy producer is either utilizing or needs to be aware of, that are coming down the pike?



Nate Zwald:



Well, I think some of those things that I mentioned, I mean, when you start thinking about the early 2000s, we were going through this time and the shift from selection really for production, which was primarily fluid milk production, and how the cow looks. From a dairy judging perspective, the show cows must be better than cows that don't look like show cows to thinking about the data and saying what makes a cow live a long, happy life and what makes cows be more productive for their owners? And does that mean that she's got to be taller and sharper and milk more in terms of fluid milk production, or does that take on a little different thing? Is it the cows that just love to live?



If you think about today's environment, everybody loves those cows that are first to the parlor. They want to get milked. And those cows that are just always happy, they're the ones that go and they eat, they sleep, they milk, and they love their life and they love doing it for their owners every day. And then not only do they eat, sleep, and milk, but they do it most profitably and productively possible. That's been through a series of genetic advancements, and really, that started with looking at those type characteristics and saying, is it type that makes a cow more profitable, or is it things like, does she get pregnant quickly? Does she have an easy calf? Does she live a long time? Is she that kind of aggressive animal that has that fire in the belly to live?



And I think it's more the latter, those things that you can't necessarily see physically and phenotypically in the cow. And that was probably the starting point to a whole series of things that kicked off a tremendous amount of genetic progress, where when we think about cows today versus cows 20 years ago, it's amazing the amount of change we've had. And that doesn't mean they all look like show cows today, but it means they're more profitable animals. They're producing a tremendous amount of more components, which is probably something that you guys and your listeners deal with regularly now. And that's because of the selection, what we're selecting for, it's how we're selecting for with genomics, but then it's how you implement those things. And that's probably the most recent thing, probably something that kind of came about quicker than what anybody was ready for, is how dramatic the impact of breeding your best animals to sex semen and your worst animals to beef semen would be in how dairy cows change and how quickly that happened.



Ted Jacoby III:



And so what are some of the results you're seeing from your point of view on that subject?



Nate Zwald:



So the first thing is we reversed the trend from what was perceived 20 years ago as Holstein cows that were difficult to get pregnant and didn't live as long as we wanted them to. And a lot of that came back to their health, their fertility rates, and ultimately then because of those things, their longevity. So we've changed that trend. That was the 30 or 40-year trend where we were making cows that milk more and looked better, but they were getting less and less fertile, especially Holsteins. Jerseys, to some degree, too. And so you think back to that time, many people thought they had to cross-breed to solve that fertility issue in Holstein cattle. Through genetics, we can make better cows faster. When you define better correctly, and you say better means they have to get pregnant and they have to live a long, profitable life.



When we changed that and implemented that and redefined what was better, we made that progress. And so we reversed that trend and now cows are getting more fertile every generation and producing more pounds of milk, but also especially more pounds of components. And I think that was a lot due to the genomic revolution. So not only did the AI companies and the genetic companies make more progress with the bulls and the genetics that they had for sale and offer, but then dairy farms started implementing the genomic technology on their females. They started testing those females and that allowed them to make decisions. Any information isn't valuable unless you use that information for something. And so for a while, there were a lot of farms that did genomic testing and didn't use the information correctly or in a way that advanced genetic progress, meaning better cows faster.



But more recently, with the advent of sex semen, people started doing what they should do, and that is breed the best of sex and leave the rest for beef. And so when you think about a bell-shaped curve of your dairy, whether you have 10,000 cows, 1,000 cows, or 100 cows, you've got this nice evenly distributed bell-shaped curve of animals. You got the best ones on the right-hand side of the curve, and you got the worst ones on the left-hand side of the curve. And when you think about using sex semen and you just think about, I can get a female replacement from all my best animals and equally importantly, I don't have to get any dairy replacement from all my worst animals, the progress of genetic progress, the speed of genetic progress absolutely doubles if not triplicates, because bell shaped curve has a lot of variation in it. There's a lot of spread between your best animals, your average animals, and your worst animals.



And you think about that genetically, there might be up to a thousand dollars of difference just genetically between your best and your worst animals in your dairy. And before the use of sex semen and beef semen, there was an equal chance that that worst animal was having a heifer calf, and your best animal was having a bull calf as the opposite of that. And today, you can ensure that your best ones have female calves and your worst ones do not have a dairy replacement. And that's the part that even I underestimated the impact that would be on the breed and on the industry in terms of genetic progress.