CANBERRA: The National Herd Improvement Association of Australia will release its semen market survey next month and the report includes all trends in semen sales for the last financial year. The report, seen by The Weekly Times, shows the number of semen straws exported from Australia jumped about 60 per cent from about 125,000 to about 200,000 between the 2015-16 and 2016-17 financial years. Semen exports had declined slightly in the 2015-16 financial year following a jump of about 44 per cent a year before. Now exports have taken off again, with reports of new demand following the conclusion of the semen market survey report on June 30.
Genetics Australia general manager Anthony Shelly said export had been a larger focus of the breeding co-operative during the past four years and had resulted in significant growth in this part of the business. He said the biggest customer, South Africa, accounted for about 25 per cent of sales, but this market had not increased in the past few years.
The New Zealand market remained stable, but Genetics Australia had recorded growth in the South American market and in the past few months in China and Malaysia. Mr Shelly said most of exported semen was Jersey and Aussie Red. “Every countre. has a lot of Holstein bulls, but not many have a strong Jersey herd,” he said. The red breed population is also small.
The report also showed Holsteins still dominated Australian semen sales, with straw numbers rising 5.9 per cent to 1.6 million. Jersey numbers lifted 4 per cent to 281,648. There were about 2 million dairy semen doses sold in Australia last financial year.
