Russia, Moscow, VDNH,
agrofarm@vdnh.ruCogent Rus LLC was created in 2015. Nowadays it’s the only full cycle genetic company in the Russian Federation: genetics + reproduction. The headquarters of the company are in the Belgorod Region, but it has over 40 partners in different regions of the country. CEO Dmitry Demchenko has shared what services Cogent Rus LLC provides and what it takes to become a client of the company, as well as the plans for the next season.
- Cogent Rus is an official and exclusive distributor of STGenetics® (USA) on the territory of the Russian Federation. We provide affordable genetic material for the best bulls of the USA, Canada and the UK, and also provide comprehensive services of herd reproduction. We perform objective, comprehensive step-by-step analysis, evaluate genetic potential of the herd, make a program selection of bulls at the chromosomal level, manage fertility, conduct complete outsourcing of reproduction: from revealing a heat detection rate to pregnancy diagnostics. Our company specializes in sexed semen, moreover - of double concentration: it inseminates as good as regular unsexed semen, but in 90% cases the semen we provide guarantees animals of a desired sex.
- What partners do you have in Russia, what agricultural enterprises do you work with? What does it take to become your partner?
- The geography is great - from Siberia to Kaliningrad; we work with modern farms and large holdings providing a comprehensive range of our services. As a rule, we start from the audit check of the enterprise to estimate a level of reproduction. We reveal and assess existing problems of a certain household and offer a solution with the help of our specialists and technologies. There are no ‘buyer-seller’ relations here, it’s about partnership. It’s the only trust-based foundation to build a mutually beneficial business on. Unfortunately, not all farms can start working with us, because the farm’s level of management should be high enough to use our technologies and products.
What are areas of expertise of the specialists in your team?
- First of all, there are production specialists - insemination technicians, veterinarians, sales professionals, economists who can always calculate the economic benefit of using some certain bull or tell about new technologies. We adopt best practices of the North American specialists and introduce it here.
Personnel is quite a complicated issue, we try to teach them ourselves. At the moment we have invited four young specialists who have just graduated from the university to join us. They undertook pre-graduation practical training at our enterprise, some of them defended a graduation thesis specializing in our subject matter, and then came to work. We have to train on the job. The problem is the information they receive in the university is outdated, mildly speaking. Our industry-specific schools often turn to textbooks that were written in 1974, more than 40 years ago. Technologies are light years away from that now.
- What do you plan to show at the AGROFARM Exhibition in February?
- We’ll tell more about new technologies, new indices that allow us reducing the amount of feeds and getting more milk. It’s about a so-called EcoFeed index, a comprehensive approach to genetic selection of animals with a high conversion of feeds designed by STgenetics. The approach analyzes factors of the environment, metabolic and genomic factors that influence profitability of a dairy cow from its birth till the moment of disposal. Bulls produced by our company meet these requirements 100%. Therefore, cows obtained from these bulls eat less, but give much more milk.
Our main task for the nearest future is to expand our business. And our main goal is to take both genetics and reproduction in Russia to a level of generally accepted global standards.