Photo: 123rf
The Livestock Improvement Corporation says dairy farmers, who have weathered recent financial headwinds, have continued to invest in herd improvement driving its latest half-year profit.
The artificial breeding and herd testing company reported a net profit after tax of $39.1 million for the six months to November, up nearly 35 percent on the same period last year.
Six-monthly revenue was up 8 percent compared to the same period in 2023 to $185.7m - and the co-op's elite bull team was valued at $96.4m.
"Farmers have generally weathered the tough financial headwinds of 2023 and early 2024," the co-op said in its financial reports.
The outlook for dairy prices have been strong in recent months, with rising global dairy prices prompting dairy giant Fonterra to lift its forecast farmgate milk price and mid-point for this season, in November.
Chief executive David Chin said there had been good demand for its animal health testing and genetics products from dairy farmers in 2024.
"The results are really good. We've got our revenues going up 8 percent, which is reflective of such strong demand for our core products and services," Chin said.
"Our straw sales of our main product premier sires was up 40,000 straws on the same time last year.
"And we're also seeing strong demand for a lot of our animal health testing especially the Johne's disease testing."
In addition to its animal health testing tools, the co-op launched a new genomics tool in June last year to help to "take the guesswork out of matching calves to their parents", the website said, by offering parentage verification and genomic evaluation.
Since its launch, it had now tested more than one million animals.
Chin said there was "strong demand" for the improved tool.
"We had a major milestone of genotyping over 1 million cows in the New Zealand dairy herd, so that was a huge win for us in the last six months.
"Farmers have really appreciated the fact that we've brought the cost of genotyping cows down by about 46 percent. So it's very, very accessible."
The co-op said submission (pregnancy) rates had increased from 79 percent last spring to 81 percent this spring.
Chin said [https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/country/509707/bacterial-contamination-behind-bad-faulty-sire-semen-livestock-improvement
reproductive performance] was key to success on farm.
"Last season, the dairy industry, we had about a 3 percent improvement in the reproductive performance of the national herd, which was hugely significant. That's the biggest jump we've had since we began measuring it.
"We've looked closely at submission rates and non-return rates last spring and in both of those have been up in the last six months. So they really bode well for another good season reproduction-wise."
He said farmers were currently testing their pregnancy detection results, and the 1000 herds through already had shown another improvement in that six-week in-calf rate.
Furthermore, LIC said it was making significant progress in its goal to introduce a methane breeding value to all LIC and genetics company CRV artificial breeding bulls from late 2026.
In early December, it announced that a trial study with CRV found that bulls identified as low methane emitters passed on this trait to their daughters.
The study began in 2020, funded by the Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre, by testing feed inputs and methane outputs on 20 bulls, which had now extended to more than 1000 young bulls.
Chin said it would build the new facility at its innovation dairy farm at Rukuhia in Waipa over the next six to seven months, to measure heifers as they lactate.
"There will be the last part of our trial, and that's very, very promising," he said.
"We're seeing these genetic heritability of that trait. The daughters of the bulls are expressing low methane traits. So that's a really good tailwind for New Zealand dairy farmers."
The co-op said non-return rates for its fresh sexed semen was now within 1 percent of conventional fresh semen.
