A.I. & Breeding

Unlike the stock market where you can cash out on a bad investment, bad genetic decisions stick with your herd and stay for generations.

“The three largest expenses of a dairy business are feed costs for the lactating herd, labor and raising replacement heifers,” Dr. Joseph Dalton of the University of Idaho stated as he opened his presentation at the Great Lakes Regional Dairy Conference recently in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

A few years ago, I was invited to a team meeting at a dairy that was considering adopting genomic testing and selection as part of their management strategy.

If I had written a book predicting the past two years in dairy farming, it would have been coined as fiction. In addition to a global pandemic, nobody could have predicted the wild swings in commodities coupled with the challenges in weather.

The reproductive health of dairy cows is one of the most important factors influencing dairy herd efficiency. As we continue to genetically select our cows to produce higher quantities of milk, research has shown that we are inadvertently decreasing cow fertility as we prolong the calving interval to maintain this high production.