LIC dairy geneticist Dr Richard Spelman says the breeding company’s work to develop the cow of the future now requires significant focus upon her welfare and health needs, which will in turn help deliver a more robust animal to cope with the climate challenges of the future.
LIC has been working within the Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures programme, a combination of the Sustainable Farming Fund and Primary Growth Partnerships programme.
The study for cows with more longevity and resilience received $25 million through the Resilient Dairy initiative.
Launched last year, the seven-year programme aims to lift dairy productivity by producing cows with improved health, wellbeing and environmental resilience.
“With many animal health aspects already being recorded by farmers as required by their milk companies, we can start to breed for traits like mastitis and lameness as well recorded phenotypes,” he said.
A burgeoning animal health issue under climate warming is increasing incidence of facial eczema, once regarded as an “upper North Island” disease, but recorded in 2016 as far south as the Grey River valley for the first time.
This work includes a study monitoring the level of an enzyme measured in herd testing milk samples to indicate the level of liver damage that often results from eczema.
“It is an area we were aiming to do a lot more work in over March-April but covid put a stop to that,” he said.
Spelman says the beauty of having 70% of the country’s dairy farmers engaged in herd testing means sample populations are large enough to provide valuable and accurate data on the country’s herd population for such work.
Taking infra-red methods already used to get fat and protein samples, and widening the light spectrum may also provide a non-invasive indicator of other heritable health traits in dairy cows.
Looking specifically at heat tolerance in a separate project ,Spelman and his colleagues have also been involved in the “rapidly evolving climate smart dairy cattle” programme, led by AgResearch and supported by LIC and CRV.
The $10 million project is studying how genetic variation can give dairy cattle greater heat tolerance and how that can be utilised in elite dairy animals through genetic editing.
New Zealand dairy cows can be severely affected by heat stress over summer, with their comfort zone of 5-20C often exceeded throughout both islands, and lower than the zone of comfort humans can tolerate.
With rising temperatures an outcome of global warming dairy cows are described as having a “mutually detrimental” relationship with climate change. Not only impacting on it through emissions, but suffering the consequences of resulting elevated temperatures.
The Senepol breed has been found to carry the heat tolerant genetics which are strongly heritable.
But Spelman says using traditional breeding technology could take seven to 10 years to transfer them into elite dairy sires and the national herd. The project does, however, allow for gene editing work through AgResearch special facilities.
The project comes as NZ continues to stand away from a national debate on “where to” with genetic editing.
“As a society though, as we face these challenges like climate change, we will have to discuss this again,” he said.
However, Spelman says he was not expecting to see much progress on the debate soon.
