A.I. & Breeding

Most farmers and veterinarians see do not breed (DNB) cows at the end of their reproductive utility. It is true they will not produce any more calves and their life expectancy will be limited by how long they can maintain production.

Price-taker mentality: Use whatever beef bull you need to get the cow pregnant with a black calf. If you don’t care about influencing your price for beef-on-dairy crossbred calves, the genetics you use don’t matter.

Heifer Livability: The new trait was released in December, but 99% of the attention went to the simultaneously released Feed Saved trait. Of course, we have been getting used to Cow Livability for a while, but it is still worthwhile to reflect on Heifer Livability for several reasons.

It is very well documented that the most important parameter to be evaluated in the modern dairy operation is pregnancy rate (PR). This is defined as the percentage of eligible cows that become pregnant within a given time frame, commonly the 21-day period of the average cow’s estrous cycle.

Describe your perfect cow. Maybe words like productive, healthy, fertile or efficient come to mind. Or, maybe your perfect cow can simply be described as profitable. While those are nice descriptors, it’ll take a more specific goal to really make progress toward your perfect herd.

Do you ever feel like the age of genomics has made dairy cattle breeding more complicated? Or perhaps more scientific? While genomics brought us accelerated progress, it has also introduced us to a range of terms previously used by scientists alone.