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% on the same period last year.
Six-monthly revenue was up 8% compared with 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 has been strong in recent months, with rising global dairy prices prompting dairy giant Fonterra in November to lift its forecast farmgate milk price and mid-point for this season.
LIC chief executive David Chin said there had been good demand for its animal health testing and genetics products from dairy farmers last year.
“We’ve got our revenues going up 8%, which is reflective of such strong demand for our core products and services.
“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 genomics tool in June to help “take the guesswork out of matching calves to their parents”, the website said, by offering parentage verification and genomic evaluation.
Since its launch, it has tested more than a million animals.
Chin said demand for the improved tool was strong.
“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%.
“So it’s very, very accessible.”
Chief executive David Chin says demand for its new genomics tool is strong. Photo / LIC
The co-op said submission (pregnancy) rates had increased from 79% last spring to 81% this spring.
“Last season, the dairy industry, we had about a 3% 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 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 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 a trial study with CRV found 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, testing feed inputs and methane outputs on 20 bulls, and 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 this genetic heritability of that trait. The daughters of the bulls are expressing low-methane traits.
