Just think of it, a whopping 9.4 million units of beef semen were sold in the United States during 2023. That’s an impressive uplift of 4.6% from the prior year, keeping us on a six-year streak of record-breaking sales. The grand leap in this cycle occurred back in 2018 when sales skyrocketed by 58%.
Breaking those figures down, 7.9 million units of this grand total were used in dairy herds. That’s a considerable upshift from the former year. Interestingly though, there was a dip in the sale of beef semen to beef cattle. This trend was spotted in both domestic and export markets causing a drop of 1.4 million units.
The U.S. bovine semen industry hit a bit of a bump in the road last year, with a 4% decline in total unit sales, slumping 2.9 million units from the previous year, 2022. We can partly attribute this to a 4% drop in domestic dairy semen sales, sadly marking the fourth consecutive year of dwindling sales.
It wasn’t only domestic sales that struggled, exports were hit too. Deliveries of both dairy and beef semen stumbled, falling 8% and 6% from 2022, respectively. Looking at the bigger picture of export sales, overall beef semen sales shrunk by 2%.
On the global stage, overseas markets splurged on 21 million units of conventional dairy semen in 2023, three times the volume sold within our home turf. However, there was a silver lining in this tale. Gender-selected semen, the frontrunner category of semen used in dairy cows, climbed the ranks by 518,000 units, a commendable rise of 7%.
Read more: National Association of Animal Breeders (NAAB)
