Are you leaving calf money on the table?

Not long ago, a Holstein bull calf might have earned you 50 bucks, if that. Today, thanks to high beef prices and better breeding tools, that same cow might deliver a $1,000 calf instead.

Beef-on-dairy isn’t just a trend; it’s changing how progressive dairies manage their herds and drive revenue.

In this episode of The Milk Check, host Ted Jacoby III talks with CoBank’s Corey Geiger and Abbigail Prins about how dairy farmers are rethinking breeding strategies and how those decisions are reshaping herd structure, replacement numbers, and profitability.

• Why some farms are holding onto cows longer


• How sexed semen and genomics are guiding breeding calls


• And how beef calves are becoming a serious income stream

Whether you’re breeding for replacements, premiums or profit, this episode unpacks how to make herd decisions that pay.

Listen now to hear why the value of a cow’s uterus might be higher than ever.

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 podcast.

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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 this month’s version of the Milk Check, a T.C. Jacoby & Co. podcast. Really excited today to have two special guests from CoBank, Corey Geiger and Abbi Prins. We are going to talk about breeding to beef and the profitability of the dairy farm, and how that dairy farm profitability has changed over the years as this trend has come about, and what it means for the future of dairy. Excited to have this conversation, Corey, Abbi, thank you so much for joining us today. So Corey, what do you do?

Corey Geiger:

CoBank is actually short for cooperative banks, so we’re the bank of cooperatives. We’re part of the Farm Credit System. Abbi and I are part of the knowledge exchange division, so we have a group of 10 economists who work in dairy and animal protein, consumer package goods, digital infrastructure, and farm inputs and crops. I’ve been at CoBank for two years now. I have just started my third year with CoBank, and Abbi joined our team about a year ago. She can tell you a little bit about herself.

Abbigail Prins:

Thanks, Corey. I also joined CoBank about a year and a half ago. I helped cover the dairy and animal protein sectors, come from a very heavy dairy and agriculture background, originally from Tulare, California, based out of Minnesota now. We’re excited to be on the podcast with you today, so thank you for the invitation.

Ted Jacoby III:

Abbi, Corey, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. So our topic today is going to be about breeding to beef and the dairy farm profitability, and how the whole breeding to beef trend has been affecting dairy farm profitability. Give us a little background on this trend of how more and more dairy farmers are breeding dairy cows in order to get cows to enter the dairy herd. More and more dairy farmers are breeding to beef and how is that affecting the dairy breed right now?

Corey Geiger:

I have a broad background, having been in the editorial team of Hoard’s Dairyman for 28 years and a past president of Holstein USA, and this is a journey. It really involves a triple play. The first part of that triple play was gender sorted semen coming onto the scene. Then genomics came on the scene, and then it all kind of came together with the beef on dairy movement. Now, economics always enters the equation because if I were to come back and have a conversation with my late grandfathers and say, “We’re breeding some of our prize Holsteins to Angus,” they’d throw me out the window, thinking I fell on my head. But gender sorted semen came along. Fertility rates really improved in dairy cattle, and I think that’s another part of the story for fertility and conception rates, and we landed up with more dairy replacements. Those prices dropped tremendously in about 2015 and almost fell to under 1,200 a head. At that time, beef prices started climbing, and a new opportunity opened up.

Abbigail Prins:

We start to see beef prices rise, followed by the introduction of beef semen purchases by dairy producers. Of course, this was not actually confirmed by the National Association of Animal Breeders, which started tracking this until 2023; however, the trend began in 2015, 2016, and 2017. We start to see more of these beef semen purchases,, and we see them being implemented into the dairy industry. We then yield these beef on dairy cross animals. They just start their career on the beef track right away instead of the secondary career after being in the milk industry and having that extra revenue generator I think was a very important piece for dairy producers to take advantage of and try to figure out strategically on the dairy farm, where’s the money going to come from and how can we best utilize the dollars that are coming back from all of our animals, whether it be from milk sales or cattle sales.

Ted Jacoby III:

The surprise to me was that the beef price started going up because if you think of it on a real, simplified level, if you’ve got more beef cattle coming into the beef herd, then why wouldn’t that cause an oversupply of beef cattle and cause the prices of beef cattle to start going down, but the opposite has happened since. What’s the dynamic that’s causing that? Is that simply an increase in demand for beef, or is there something else going on in the beef side of the business right now?

Abbigail Prins:

This, I would say, starts back to 2019. We see the peak of the beef cow cycle, so that was the most recent time that we had the highest number of beef female cows; that number we’ve been liquidating ever since. And when you have a low supply and high demand, that means the price is going to go up, according to a straightforward economic equation. So, where these animals come into it is that if we see this decline in the beef cow herd, if there are fewer females available, that means that fewer calves are going to be born in the preceding years. And then we’ve seen this transition since the late 1990s, where beef quality has skyrocketed.

We are seeing record amounts of prime and choice-grade beef, and as a result, we have extremely high consumer demand. We continue to see retail beef prices hitting records nearly month after month. They just keep going back to the meat case and buying more beef, which has caused cattle prices to really skyrocket and hit record levels nearly every week with regard to live and feeder cattle futures. And so that’s where we’re seeing this beef price really start to take off.

Corey Geiger:

Three bench posts to keep in mind total cattle inventory and that counts all beef cattle and all dairy cattle is at the lowest since 1951. The beef cow herd is the lowest since 1961, and feeder supplies the rest of us, which we would call those steers, are at the lowest levels since ’72. When you take those three data points and look at consumer demand and where we are today, limited supply, strong demand equals record prices.

Ted Jacoby III:

Did this really strong demand for beef start just before COVID, or has this increased beef demand been coming for a while yet?

Abbigail Prins:

I think it’s been a gradual shift in demand. I think the initial push started back in the 1990s to improve meat quality. Of course, that takes time, as we see gestation lengths in cattle are nine months, and then you still have to raise them until they can become part of the beef supply chain. I think that was the initial starting point where we see quality go up, and then just this gradual introduction back to consumers of we have this incredible quality of beef for you to be able to consume. I’d say it’s been a really big shift, probably over the past decade or so, and then moving into what it is today.

Ted Jacoby III:

When COVID hit, it was just kind of that perfect storm of everything is already tight, the demand for beef was already good, now everybody’s locked up at home, and all they want to do is cook steaks because they can’t go to the restaurant. They have a special meal, and the next thing you know, the beef herd drops a significant percent that just started the cycle, and when you’re talking about a herd, once it’s low, there’s no way to just snap your fingers and get that number back to where it needs to be, correct?

Abbigail Prins:

Sure. I definitely think that COVID kind of exacerbated the situation a little bit, and I definitely agree that COVID hits, you can’t go to the restaurant anymore, you’re going to buy a Pit Boss or a Traeger grill, and you’re going to start making all of those restaurant-quality dishes at home. I think because w