Soaring dairy heifer prices are set to go even higher as large family farming operations and corporate investors cash in on rising farmgate milk prices, and sales of gender-biased semen are leaping, as farmers bank on breeding female-only calves.
Semen importers and artificial breeders say they can’t keep up with demand for single-sex semen for eastern Australian dairy herds.
The specialised product has had male sperm removed to provide as much as a 90 per cent chance of producing a female calf.
Orders for the semen, sourced mainly from North America, have risen four-fold in the past six months.
Most farmers are paying $60 a straw – three times the typical price of standard semen used in artificial insemination programs – in a bid to increase heifer numbers to speed up herd building, but some sexed semen is selling for as much as $120 a straw.
Many producers say it is the only option they have to ramp up their production, given dairy heifers are virtually impossible to buy at present, thanks partly to a rush of Australian dairy cattle export activity in recent years, particularly from Victoria.
Drought encouraged many producers to use the export market as a cash option to help them destock and bolster depleted farm earnings.
Now, with a 40 per cent increase in farmgate prices under their belts and a strong global dairy market, milk producers are looking to expand.
Since Christmas, dairy cattle prices across NSW have risen by 40 per cent with 12-month-old heifers which sold for $450 last December now worth $750.
Stephen McGuinness, from Kiama-based dairy cattle agents Hedley Johnson Pty Ltd, tips prices will jump another 40 per cent within 12 months.
Big corporations and family operations prominent in beef or other agriculture sectors are looking at setting up dairies and are in the market for in-calf and mating-aged heifers in large numbers, he said.
From The Land, July 31, 2008.