Genomics - to some farmers this is an amazing innovation that they have embraced with open arms. For others, it may be a bit of a scientific mystery but according to Rob Cooper, my guest this month it is actually very simple to use and a powerful tool that he is passionate about and would like to see more people in the industry adopt.
Rob is well known to many in dairying. He was a successful dairy farmer for many years always open to new ideas, reading and travelling widely to increase his knowledge and then implementing this into his business. He first started using genomics in 2013 and since selling the dairy business he has been involved in many industry programs and groups, including board membership on Subtropical Dairy, DairyBio and Dairy FeedBase as well as current Chair of NSW’s Dairy Action Plan Implementation Panel.
Rob shares with us the benefits and opportunities of genomics from his experience in a very practical sense today.
Useful resources related to this podcast:
To contact Rob Cooper robacooper@bigpond.com
Dairy Australia Cow and Heifer Genomics | Dairy Australia
“Genomics at a Glance” webinar with Peter Williams (DataGene) and Rob Cooper.
This podcast is an initiative of the NSW DPI Dairy Business Advisory Unit
It is brought to you in partnership the Hunter Local Land Services
Please share this podcast with your fellow farmers and colleagues and feel free to contact us with suggestions or comments via this email address thebusinessofdairy@gmail.com
Further NSW DPI Dairy channels to follow and subscribe to include;
DPI Intensive Livestock Twitter feed
Transcript here
Produced by Video Lift
The information discussed in this podcast are for informative and educational purposes only and do not constitute advice.
Genomics - to some farmers this is an amazing innovation that they have embraced with open arms. For others, it may be a bit of a scientific mystery but according to Rob Cooper, my guest this month it is actually very simple to use and a powerful tool that he is passionate about and would like to see more people in the industry adopt.
Rob is well known to many in dairying. He was a successful dairy farmer for many years always open to new ideas, reading and travelling widely to increase his knowledge and then implementing this into his business. He first started using genomics in 2013 and since selling the dairy business he has been involved in many industry programs and groups, including board membership on Subtropical Dairy, DairyBio and Dairy FeedBase as well as current Chair of NSW’s Dairy Action Plan Implementation Panel.
Rob shares with us the benefits and opportunities of genomics from his experience in a very practical sense today.
Useful resources related to this podcast:
To contact Rob Cooper robacooper@bigpond.com
Dairy Australia Cow and Heifer Genomics | Dairy Australia
“Genomics at a Glance” webinar with Peter Williams (DataGene) and Rob Cooper.
This podcast is an initiative of the NSW DPI Dairy Business Advisory Unit
It is brought to you in partnership the Hunter Local Land Services
Please share this podcast with your fellow farmers and colleagues and feel free to contact us with suggestions or comments via this email address thebusinessofdairy@gmail.com
Further NSW DPI Dairy channels to follow and subscribe to include;
DPI Intensive Livestock Twitter feed
Transcript here
Produced by Video Lift
The information discussed in this podcast are for informative and educational purposes only and do not constitute advice.
The Business of Dairy
Episode #21 Transcript – “How Can Genomics Benefit Me?”
Sheena Carter: Welcome to the Business of Dairy podcast, I'm Sheena Carter, development officer with the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries Dairy Team. Genomics, to some farmers this is an amazing innovation that they have embraced with open arms, for others it may be a bit of a scientific mystery, but according to Rob Cooper, my guest this month, it is actually very simple to use and a powerful tool that he is passionate about and would like to see more people in the industry adopt. Rob is well known to many in dairying. He was a successful dairy farmer for many years, always open to new ideas, engaging with others, reading and travelling widely to increase his knowledge and then implementing this into his business. He first started using genomics in 2013 and since selling the dairy business he has been involved in many industry programs and organisations, including board membership on Subtropical Dairy, DairyBio and DairyFeedbase, as well as current chair of New South Wales’ Dairy Action Plan Implementation Panel. Rob shares with us the benefits and opportunities of genomics from his experience in a very practical sense today.
Welcome to the Business of Dairy podcast, Rob. You have a wealth of experience with genomics, both practically as a dairy farmer, and I would consider you as being one of the early adopters of genomics technology in New South Wales and probably in Australia, but since you've finished dairy farming you've also been actively involved with industry programs and boards, as I've mentioned in the introduction, so it's great to have you as my guest today.
Rob Cooper: Yeah, thank you, Sheena. I really appreciate the opportunity to come on the podcast and just talk about this technology called genomic testing. You know, I've been involved with the dairy industry for a number of years, probably close to 40 or a bit more, and I think this is something farmers really need to look at and I think it's, from my experience, one of the best technologies that has come along in my lifetime as a dairy farmer.
Sheena Carter: Yes, it's an exciting piece of technology and I think as dairy farmers, farmers are always looking for productivity gains in their business. And by that I mean they're trying to generate more from what they already have. So in terms of things like herd performance, genetic gain or improvement, is certainly one way to achieve this and genomics is certainly being promoted by the industry as a key innovation to achieve things like increased milk production per cow or improved fertility within a herd, whatever your goal may be. But let's kick off. Can you tell me why? Why should farmers consider genomics?
Rob Cooper: Well, the reason is we've got to come back to what we're actually doing as dairy farmers. You know, you ask yourself what you're really doing as a dairy farmer, well, you're taking your resources, your land, growing pastures and crops, and turning that into a saleable product, and in our situation it's milk, but also beef to a lesser extent. And we want to do that as efficiently as possible to increase profits. And we are in the business of making money – ultimately it comes to that, we want a good lifestyle with it and I think genomics, as we discuss it today, can help in both those areas. And we've got to remember part of that is turning pasture and crops into milk. It involves both our farm system, our environment that the cows are in and where we're growing the crops, but it also involves the genetics of the animal to do that efficiently. So it's not all about genetics, it's not all about your farm system. So we're combining those two, but we're trying to really improve the genetics part of it. And this is something really for commercial herds. A lot of the registered herds have been really focused on genetics for a long time and got a real interest in it. This is an easy way for a commercial herd to really put a system in place for their genetic gain and increasing genetic gain of their herd. And that's really what we're doing, you know, looking at making it easier, and we'll talk about how that can be done and making greater profits.
Sheena Carter: Yes. So like you say, it really is marrying a lot of things together – the resources you've got but also the genetics that you've got, whether that's cow or pasture or whatever it might be. Genomics might be a term and a technology that some people aren't particularly familiar with, they may have heard of it, but could you explain to our audience what exactly is genomics?
Rob Cooper: Well what genomics is, and I want to say just right off the top, when we look at different technologies it's sometimes hard for a farmer, especially a dairy farmer, to find time to implement change and implement new technologies. We're very time poor, very busy. But this is an easy technology to implement and I just encourage you to listen to the podcast, take it in and see how you can do it on your farm.
So what genomics is, it's taking a DNA sample of an animal, either a through a tail sample or through a little bit of a tissue sample, usually from the ear, and getting that analysed and it shows the full DNA of that animal. What we're looking at is how mating has come together from the sire and the dam, because we’re getting really different genes and chromosomes from each animal and they come together in different forms. Now, we don't know how that combination has come together in the past until we've actually seen the animal grow and perform in the herd through herd recording and recording mastitis and fertility events etcetera, maybe assessing their type, but now we have an opportunity of seeing that a lot earlier if we take the sample as a calf. So we take that DNA sample and we look at it as comparison to a reference population. In Australia it's up around 12,000 plus animals, is the reference population that has been done, and it gives us a very accurate indication of how that animal will perform in the herd.
Sheena Carter: And I guess… well, a couple of things on those points that you've made, Rob, previously, prior to this technology, it would take time to get an accurate picture of that animal's performance, whereas now you're saying through the analysis of the DNA – their genetic makeup, that is giving us an indication right now, what is the potential of this heifer within my herd? Is that a fair summation?
Rob Cooper: Yeah, definitely. Now, I started genomic testing when I first saw the technology come out in 2013. So I've been genomically testing for about eight years and we've done over two, two and a half thousand tests and a fair bit of experience. But what really got me going on genomic testing was when I saw a chart of the reliability of testing an animal. So with genomic testing, we can test an animal and get the same reliability of those figures as a cow that's had seven lactations and been herd recorded and performance monitored, all their events recorded. This really was the light bulb moment for me when I saw the picture of a ten year old animal – done about seven lactations, her reliability of her information is up around the 70%. We can get that same information of a calf by taking a tissue sample as a, basically, a week old animal, and so it really gives you the power of what you can do with that.
So if I just give an example of, say, fertility, which has obviously been a problem in the Holstein breed for a number of years, that's turning around mainly through genomics, but if you had bred an animal, it would be at least the third or fourth lactation before you really realised her fertility level and that she might have been a low fertility animal. Now we can actually tell that as a calf and we can actually identify those lower end ones and do something about it. Make sure at least we don't breed from those animals and produce more heifers to come in the herd. We can either… if we've got the opportunity of culling them, exporting them, selling them, or we can make sure they go to a beef animal and doesn't produce another heifer. So it's really powerful information that can show us clearly as a calf how that animal is going to perform her production, her feet and legs, udder type traits, fertility, mastitis level, ease of calving, all that can be shown at a low level with a fairly high reliability.
Sheena Carter: You know, I guess a point to make, which is an obvious point, but raising or rearing heifers is a costly exercise, so you want to be rearing ones that have got the potential to generate that profit because they all come with the same cost to rear them, so if you're rearing those poorer performers and they're not performing for you, there's lost opportunity or potentially cost to you in those animals, essentially. And I guess, you know, you've mentioned some of those things that are being measured, and they're really powerful pieces of information, how do farmers then use that information within their herd?
Rob Cooper: Probably just need to go back a step there and say, when we do a mating, in previous years we've looked at the sire and dam and tried to predict what they call a parent average for the genetics, and that tends to be a very low reliability. But when we do a mating, we get a range of outcomes, we get some that are better, some that are worse. What we're trying to do is identify the worst one. So if we're rearing an animal, most people would agree these days that it's up around the $2,000 per animal to get a heifer into the herd, some of those animals, the lower end, are going to take a long time to pay back that rearing cost, and so if we can eliminate some of those bottom end animals early, we can save a lot of cost on calf rearing.
One potential of genomics is really identifying the bottom end of the calves and, you know, at 6 – 12 months actually either selling the animal if we can on the export market or if we do, I'd make sure that animal would actually get a beef breeding so it didn't produce more heifers from it. It's because we're getting a range – we get a range in fertility, mastitis, type traits and production, that's why genomics work. If every breeding produced the same result, and there are technologies that do that but that's very costly, we wouldn't have this potential with genomics, and that goes on to the cow as well and the potential there of the difference and we can work out the potential extra profit we can make by eliminating those bottom end ones.
Sheena Carter: Yes. So I guess once you've done your genomic testing, and we'll put some links in the show notes for people to view some of the webinars that you've been involved with, with Peter Williams from DataGene, but with that genomic testing there's the classic illustration of the bell curve and how it manages to filter out poorer performers, average performers and the top performers. So you're saying we've got a range of potential within that herd. I guess the real decision is, what do you do with the poorer performers, breeding options, as you've mentioned, or selling them as heifers earlier on? And I guess, you know, you've certainly done that, as you've said in running Split Rock, the dairy business that you were involved with up in in New South Wales. So do you want to speak a bit more about that and how you were using that and what you were doing in terms of marketing those bottom end animals?
Rob Cooper: I think we probably just really put some numbers on the range in most herds and there's been quite a bit of studies done. The ImProving Herds study, which shows that between your bottom end animals and your top end animals, there's something like 650 extra litres per year that they can produce or around 88 kilos of milk solids. And so if you put some real numbers around that, and hopefully most of us are talking milk solids these days, the 88, if you times that even by nine, that comes out to $800 per animal extra between the bottom end and the top end, and so there's a real potential to make more money and more profit out of these animals. So that's obviously, talking about a gross income, there is cost to come out of that, but there's a potential to really increase your profit and the end dollars and, you know, it does come down to survival. So really, as a dairy farm, we're trying to do it more efficiently, trying to make more money, there is real cost increases and so we have to become more efficient, and so there's a potential there of that.
What you were talking about there, Sheena, was actually practically how we do this, is some people thought when they genomically tested, ah this technology, I'll identify the top few animals I’ll do a few and try and breed a few better heifers from the top animals. That's really not what it's about. It's about testing your whole group of calves, heifers and identifying the lower end ones and doing something with those. So when you've got that information we can breed the top end, identify accurately the top end of the group of animals and use sexed semen on those, and then maybe the next lot down we can use… some people are comfortable using a bit of conventional semen on some of those animals, and then on the bottom end, either selling them or using some beef semen on those. It gives you options but the thing is, you're clearly identifying the ranking in your herd of your heifers. Now, normally you’d go out into the heifer paddock and you think, oh, I've got a bit of an idea how these animals rank. If you're a larger herd, it's nearly impossible. Now you've got a clear list of animals from the top animal in the heifer group, or your whole herd, down to the worst animals on a genetic basis. And then you can confidently say, well, I want to do something with these bottom 20 animals – selling them, or as I say, putting them to beef. We always seemed to be growing our herd so we didn't really want to get rid of too many heifers but I made sure I didn't get heifers out of those bottom end and that really grew the average genetic gain in the herd. That's the options you've got and for a manager or an owner, it just gives you a clear list, where before it was a bit of a… yeah, you didn’t know which ones to select.
Sheena Carter: We will come back to the list that you started to touch on and the reports but, so we've talked about identifying that bottom end and opportunities that you've got in dealing with that bottom end of your heifer cohort, but then you've touched on another point, which is that genetic gain across the whole herd. So, you know, with conventional ways of measuring animal performance and the time period that it would take to improve the herd genetics. Do you want to talk about that, how that looks in comparison to using genomics?
Rob Cooper: Yeah. Well, if we think about it over history and, you know, my grandfather and uncle had jerseys in Tasmania, small herd. Now they used to breed some really good animals that they did it through line breeding of physical bull matings with a cow. Then AI came in and we were importing bulls, doing fresh semen, you know, out of the Aberdeen and Berry AI centres, and then we went on to frozen semen and now we've got sexed semen, yeah this technology. But trying to relate back to farmers on why they should take this on, and give them a bit of motivation to, back in the nineties I was thinking, you know, some of my best cows then, it took me about 16 years for the bottom end to get better than the top end of the cow. So the best cow in the early nineties, it took into the, you know, 2005-2006, before my whole herd had got better than that animal and it was about 16 years. It's about, on conventional breeding with AI, about half a percent gained per year. Well, one of the other real things that got me onto genomics was someone said, well, I've been doing this and I can do it within four years. So potentially getting a four times gain in your genetics gain off your animals. So that is really helpful, especially when you're trying to change, get improvements in things like fertility and calving ease. For a lot of us now, with larger herds, we want better udders, well we can really make really good gains in that area as well as getting some extra production on top.
Sheena Carter: Yeah, it is very powerful, isn't it? I mean, that is a rapid, very rapid rate of gain in a biological system that without this technology, it takes a long time to lift the performance of your herd.
Rob Cooper: We're really fortunate as dairy farmers. We're in a biological system where we can really make improvements as opposed to some other businesses that are just transforming something into something else – very hard to make efficiency gains. We can come and breed better animals, identify better animals and breed from them, selection from them, and obviously the same with pastures and crops, and yeah, it gives us a big advantage. You know, I must say a lot of our gains that we've made we do pass on to the consumer but that's no reason not to stop improving our system, our total farm system, it is a total farm package. But this side of genomics, and it’s why I’m trying to encourage other farmers to take it on, it is very simple. It's hard with a lot of things to make the first step, but once you've got it happening, it is very simple and something really for the long term improvement of your farm and really the survival of the farm.
Sheena Carter: Yes, I think we're certainly seeing this technology being adopted. I read an article recently, I think it was Matt Shaffer that was quoted from DataGene, where they highlighted that in the 20/21 financial year there were over 61,000 females tested nationally and that included 50,000 heifers, so we certainly know that there is interest in this technology. Can you explain, you know, you've mentioned that sometimes it's a bit difficult to adopt new technologies, but you're telling us that it is quite easy to adopt genomics. If I'm a farmer, how do I start genomic testing my herd? What do I actually have to do on farm to get this to happen?
Rob Cooper: So there's a number of service providers and there'll be links to those in the notes attached, but the main ones are: Zoetis do it – they do the testings; Neogen; there's a company called Weatherbys that is doing it; Semex do it; and also Sexing Technologies. I think they are all of them that do it. Just a matter of calling one of those up and they'll come and give you a start. They’ll fill in the paperwork, they'll probably do the first test for you, bring the equipment along and get you get you started. It is easy, but if you're not herd recording, no worries, the animals will be recorded with a national identification number and put into the system. What is very important as a dairy farmer, again, to make sure that when you adopt a new technology, you keep doing it, is that you make it part of a program. Either you can do it when you do all your vaccinations, when you’ve got them coming through a race, you just do a click on their ear and you got that test. You might do it… I did it when I de-horned, so you know, knocked all the calves out, went around, took a nice little hole with the tissue sampler that you can get and then put the NLIS tag in there and it was a very good way of doing it then, check for extra teets and just made it part of the program when you did it, and that is important that you just make it part of your program, it's not an extra thing really to do and it just happens and then the results will just come back through the system. And again, it's very easy to get the results, your provider will provide a spreadsheet, which is very complex, it's about 40 columns or something on each animal. Most people don't want to deal with that, so DataGene has got what they call DataVat, which is a fairly new platform that brings all the information together. Each farm, dairy farm in Australia, can access that for free and bring up their results and analyse the results into a list. And then also the other companies like the Zoetis and Neogen have got their own platforms where you can analyse the results very easily. Some people like to look at a lot of figures and work spreadsheets, but you can make it very simple into an index and in Australia, need to remember, we've got the Balanced Performance Index or the Health Weighted Index or now the new Sustainability Index, three different index, which brings together the traits and production into a balanced performance index, balancing them all together for the right improvement as the cow goes along.
Now, I just encourage people, you know, that's improved over the years, that index, to suit the Australian situation. Many companies offer an international or overseas index, but I'd encourage people to look at the Balanced Performance Index from Australia measuring Australian performance, especially in heat tolerance we're leader, right up there with feed efficiency that's coming in now. It's well worth looking at the Australian index. Don't just put it to one side, so I just encourage people to do that.
The other thing I should mention, Sheena, is people talk about their levy money, now, their levy money's going into genomics, right back in 2008 or before, in Australia. But actually developing this, right through to what DataGene does in DataVat for free, bringing all these index together. We don't often realise where our levy money is being spent and it is very worthwhile being spent in this area, and again, farmers need to use that to their benefit.
Sheena Carter: Certainly is, well and truly. You've mentioned the Balanced Performance Index, or the BPI, so I guess at a, you know, perhaps let's just say the most basic level if the farmer has sent a batch of samples off to get tested, they get the report back and they could just purely rank the animals on the BPI and use that to identify the bottom end of their herd, and then, you know, whatever their strategy is to manage that bottom end, they can easily identify the animals from there, pick them out and away they go?
Rob Cooper: Yes, and it does lead to other steps. So once you've got that information, you need to choose good bulls to improve the herd. So DataGene have got what they call the Good Bulls Guide, and it's on an app, it's very easy to use. Look up on your Play Store or App Store and look up Good Bulls Guide, it’s got all the Australian bulls there and ones being imported into Australia and you can easily select good bulls. So it's important people do choose good bulls and not just choose ones that are sold to them, make that choice. So if your better heifers are up around the 200 - 250 BPI, choose bulls that are up around in the four hundreds, now in the five hundreds, and that will give a nice improvement to your herd. Sometimes people are choosing those BPIs in the low 200s, so they're not getting the full benefit of the sire selection, so that's important. Then leads on to sexed semen. People are getting really good results with sexed semen. Originally, probably not as good results, but that product has been improved a lot. So I encourage people to look at sexed semen and the better bulls there, doing most of your heifers with sexed semen because the conception rate is high. And then the third thing it does lead on to, and I think this is even more important, is that we can breed a large percentage of our herd to beef and we can choose… we've got real choice in what beef sires we choose, so we can choose sires that are really high conception rate, some are 5% to 10% above the average, so we can make improvements there from when sexed semen is a little bit lower, maybe. We can choose short gestation bulls, so we can actually catch up on some that may be multiple bred and we can choose easily sire and good growth rates post birth and these are animals now that the beef producers, and also feedlots, are really wanting these genetics. I must say, one thing leads to another but it is a real system that's easy to manage but can get really good results to the bottom line.
Sheena Carter: And opens up other options to you and to how you manage your herd and markets that are available to you with that end. Couple of quick questions around… how long does it take to get the results back and what does it cost to test an animal?
Rob Cooper: On average, it's about $50 to test an animal. Most people are seeing about a $500 return to that per animal after, you know, it comes into the herd - about four years. So that's just a tremendous return on investment. But it's not only dollars, it's also the physical which is important too, but it's about 6 to 8 weeks return. When I started, we were just doing two runs per year, now I think it's a run every week with DataGene because of the numbers, so the animals come back very quickly.
Can I just mentioned two other advantages, which are pretty important, is parent verification is a big plus. So you can verify the parent of both the sire and the dam. The dam if you've been testing for a little while and you’ve got the female information coming through and it'll verify. So most herds you have some mistakes happen, all the way along the line, whether somebody has written the wrong number down, you’re often “AI-ing” in the dark and it’s hard to pick out the right straw out of the tank, get it a little bit wrong, enter the wrong one into the computer. When calving happens, they switch animals often and yes, you do get a percentage wrong. And that's really important because you might actually be identified wrong and you might be selling your better calf or not knowing that your better calf is actually the one that you’ve identified as a lower end one. So that really tightens all that up. So it's really giving the management, especially of a commercial herd, good information all the way along.
And the other advantage is, if you've got herd bulls, a lot of people use herd bulls to mop up and that sort of thing, well you can genomically test the bull and work out if you've got, you know, we had eight bulls, sometimes four in the herd we could identify exactly which sire was for that calf and, you know, maybe the cow got served by multiple bulls, so you still can tell the sire of that calf. So that's pretty important to just get that more accurate. It will give us better information also on inbreeding and help in that area, which is a little bit of a problem creeping into our breed.
Sheena Carter: Yeah and I think, you know, on that on that, misidentification, I know I've read that DataGene have certainly done a bit of a work in this space and within herds there can be up to 15% of calves misidentified. So it's not insignificant is it, Rob?
Rob Cooper: No, I thought we had a pretty good management, but we had about 20% wrong for various reasons. We did batch calve, which a lot of people are doing now, and it's interesting, I just saw on YouTube, watching a dairy farmer in New Zealand who just started genomic testing – obviously they have batches and he had 40% wrong. Probably didn't worry too much about writing animals down at the time, but the more we go into larger herds and batch calving, the more we need that information and it will have significant effect on inbreeding in the future.
Sheena Carter: Just a question, Rob, if you're doing this as a farmer, do you have to have a minimum number of samples to sell off? I would imagine, you know, there's obviously efficiencies for both you and also the testing labs. Is there a minimum number?
Rob Cooper: Not really, no. They usually… what I did was just collect the sample, and there’s various methods of collecting sample which we won’t get on to now, but to make that a lot easier – different trays and sets and that can make it more accurate – but yeah, if you just get ten you can send them away to your service provider or if you wait and do it every six months or something, or every three months, yeah, just a matter of posting them away. The samples don't have to be refrigerated. They don't want to be put out in the sun but they do last, they’ve got a preservative in them so they can last until you get a bit of a group together and then post them away. Yeah, that side of it is really easy.
Sheena Carter: Excellent. Look, we've had a lengthy discussion and covered quite a bit, but I think we’ll put a link in the show notes to some of the webinars that have been done for industry. So people, I'd encourage you to click on those and have a look because they give lots of visual explanations about what Rob and I have been speaking about on this podcast. But there's also plenty of initiatives, including courses as well as the webinars, to help farmers understand genomics and how to use them in your business. Rob, could you just give us a bit of an explanation, talk about some of these initiatives?
Rob Cooper: Dairy Australia and the various regional programs, Dairy New South Wales, etc., are running different courses. So we've got three levels: Genomics at a Glance, which is a little bit what we touched on today, but that's available – we're doing more online of those that you can join, or to discussion groups, to YDN groups, young groups, TAFE groups, anything like that to really get a good basis.
Then we're going to be doing some on-farm practical field days called Genomics in Practice, so, showing you how to take the samples, see how the results come back, how to access those results and interpret them. And then the third one is the online discussion group to just… when someone that's been testing for a while, just to answer any questions or go to the next level of using those results, called Genomics in Action. So that's the main three levels that you need to watch out for. I'm more than happy to help anyone that wants to get started, answer any questions. I don't mind if you put my contact details down, most people know where to find me, but yeah, it is a matter of starting.
And just to wrap things up, if I can, Sheena, I think for dairy farmers this is something really worth considering getting into their program. It is easy once you’re started. I encourage people to maybe give it a go for four years and just really see the benefits of it. Couple of the advantages we haven't really touched on, just quickly, we've talked about the financial benefit, but as we employ more labour, some of the physical benefits of easy calving, having less calving troubles, less mastitis, higher fertility, easy to milk the cow, like, put the cups on with better type. Having improvements, quicker improvements in those areas makes it easier to employ people and to actually leave them. As an owner, often you want to get away for a day – you can even be more confident to leave people because there's not as many problems happening, so that's a big plus I think people should really think about. And the other one is, this is a technology that you can easily delegate to somebody in your family, maybe a younger person that can take this responsibility, or a staff employee. You can delegate them to take the samples, to look at the results and just come back to you with a list in the end and, you know, we're very time poor as farmers, yeah, it's something you can just allocate or delegate to somebody else and that's a big plus of this technology.
Sheena Carter: Yeah, and I think that on that last point, Rob, it's really something that would give young employees or the younger generation in the business some real buy in and incentivisation to be making some change in the business.
Rob Cooper: Yeah, interested in the animal side of things, you know, then it translates into growing better calves and seeing them come through the herd and just get some interest in and it's something most farm owners don't really want to do themselves, you know, even to the bull selection side of things and the beef side, so I encourage people to have a look at it.
Sheena Carter: Wonderful, thank you, Rob. Look and thank you very much for your time and sharing all your thoughts, your knowledge and your insights into this technology. It's a technology that you've lived and breathed and are obviously very passionate about still. So I will probably put your email address in the show notes if people would like to reach out to you, and I would encourage you to reach out to Rob, he's very approachable, obviously, as you can hear from this podcast and more than willing to share his knowledge and experience with others in the industry. So Rob, thank you very much for your time today on the podcast.
Rob Cooper: Thanks very much, Sheena, and keep up the good work with the podcast.
Sheena Carter: Thanks, Rob.
Thank you for listening to this month's The Business of Dairy podcast produced by the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries Dairy Business Advisory Unit. This series is brought to you with funding and support from the Hunter Local Land Services. I would strongly encourage you to reach out to Rob if you would like to know more about genomics. His contact details are in the show notes with links to DataGene and Dairy Australia websites and the Genomics at a Glance webinar with Peter Williams from DataGene and Rob Cooper. We'd love you to share this podcast with your networks and feel free to send any feedback or suggestions for future episodes to thebusinessofdairy@gmail.com You can also subscribe to our Facebook and Twitter feed and view or subscribe to our DPI Dairy newsletter using the links provided.