Harvest Road uses beef-on-dairy practice to introduce dairy meat to its premium beef program

Dairy meat is set to become part of a premium WA beef program thanks to the rapidly evolving breeding practice, beef-on-dairy.

Harvest Road has invested time and money into trialling the concept within its 100-day grain-fed system, a premium beef program which finishes cattle on a strict diet.

Beef-on-dairy, which requires dairy farmers to breed dairy cows with top-tier beef bulls like Angus or Wagyu, has now become part of the company’s broader strategy to form collaborative supply chains in the WA market.

Harvest Road livestock general manager Damian Barsby said trials had confirmed beef-on-dairy fit into its feeder cattle supply for its 100-day grain-fed system at its Koojan Downs feeding facility near Moora.

“They have shown from the initial trial that feeding performance and eating quality are on par with traditional beef breeds,” he said.

Trials were conducted in 2024 in collaboration with genetics company Semex which sourced steers from dairy farms that had already been using improved beef genetics.

Mr Barsby said the new program would offer some consistency to dairy farmers.

“Farmers love consistency,” he said.

“They know their production systems and what they can achieve to the day when they sell.

“That allows us plenty of time to program these cattle into our system.”

Mr Barsby said there was an appetite from dairy farmers to move towards selling a beef-on-dairy steer which could be used as a commercially higher-value animal.

“If we get those animals out younger and into the supply chain, we can potentially utilise more country around WA for backgrounding young cattle instead of seeing them exit the WA supply chain,” he said.

Beef-on-dairy began in Australia as an opportunity to better use the dairy herd but has since become a strategic supply pathway delivering productivity, resilience and long-term growth for the beef industry.

Industry has acknowledged the beef-on-dairy concept to be an effective way to implement the Australian dairy industry’s policy, the CalfWays Roadmap, driven by Dairy Australia, which aims to ensure all non-replacement calves enter a valued market chain by 2035 to completely eliminate routine on-farm euthanasia of viable calves.