Today we're joined by Renee Smith, Western sales manager at Virtus Nutrition, a manufacturer of calcium salts of fatty acids, to discuss benchmarking for fertility, the top KPIs that every dairy should watch.

Renee Smith, Western sales manager at Virtus Nutrition

Season 7, Episode 21

This episode is sponsored by Virtus Nutrition.

Here are the show notes for this episode:

Hello everyone. Today we are talking with Renee Smith with Virtus Nutrition. Renee, welcome to the program. Thank you, Fredric.

Renee, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, what your background is and what you do with Virtus.

I work for Virtus Nutrition, who manufactures calcium salts of fatty acids, and I live in Bakersfield, California. My role with Virtus is Western sales manager, and I've been here for over 15 years.

(0:29) Today we're discussing benchmarking for fertility, the top KPIs that every dairy should watch. Tell me why benchmarking reproductive results is so important.

I think this morning's headlines say it all. I saw an article that USDA did their update on what the prices received for milk cows were for the last quarter, and they were over $2,800 per head, which is just the highest prices since they started recording those. If we didn't believe that reproduction was valuable already, important already as a primary strategy for improving economics on the dairy, the heifer prices being so high, the value of beef calves, any calf actually, just reinforces that.

My hope for this discussion today is really to help us just revisit these KPIs as I've been doing a fair amount of benchmarking over the last couple years and learned a few nuances that I think our dairy producer audience would find some value in. 

(1:37) There are a lot of different numbers that dairies track regarding reproduction. What are the top KPIs that you focus on with your clients and why?

I've got three that have really floated to the top that I'd like to talk about today, that there aren't other ones, but I think understanding how these three interact with each other can really help dairy producers and their advisers have a clear view of their reproductive results.

Number one is percent pregnant by 150 days in milk. If I had to pick one metric, this would be it. Although it has some lag time and not super time sensitive, it really shows how well a herd's doing at getting cows pregnant in that profitable window after calving.

It's a simple metric. What I like most about it is it removes some of those factors that can make the pregnancy rate not as clear. The changes in voluntary wait period, do not breeds, other things that really affect pregnancy rate are not affected in that percent pregnant by 150 days in milk.

I'd say the goals are really to shoot for that 75% to 85% pregnant by 150 days in milk. Top herds that I benchmark are up in the 80s. That range is pretty big though from 60 up to 85.

The second one is pregnancy rate, which is really tied to the first metric really closely. It's heat detection times conception rate. Not a surprise since this really is the industry standard.

I was trained years ago on watching this number and so is the rest of the industry. Certainly another metric, it's very timely since you're calculating that every 21 days, so you get timely feedback as you're going along. You can look back and see fairly quickly what those results are looking like or what your trends are doing.

Because of some of the changes in how herds manage reproduction, a lot of voluntary wait periods are being pushed farther out, 70, 80, 90, some 100 day voluntary wait periods. That really affects how you look at pregnancy rate since it's the time after the voluntary wait period that you're calculating. Because of that, you can lose a little bit of a perspective on how quickly you're getting cows pregnant as a whole by having that voluntary wait period as part of that equation.

Certainly, it makes it more challenging if you're comparing across herds with all these different voluntary wait periods to really see just in the big picture how quickly we're getting cows pregnant. Then the third metric that I think is often overlooked or not focused on is that early pregnancy loss or aborts. It has some bearing on what your pregnancy rate looks like, but it doesn't have the full weight of that impact within pregnancy rate because with preg rate, you're always looking at that last nine months of performance.

With abort rates or pregnancy loss, you have to let time pass in order to see if those cows are going to hold those pregnancies. There's a little bit of an effect on preg rate from those aborts. Some of those are picked up, but really you have to have a retrospective look back up eight months and then look at your preg rate chart for that year prior to really get a good look at what impact that's having on your pregnancy rate.

(5:21) We're talking with Renee Smith with Virtus Nutrition. You mentioned pregnancy rate is one metric most dairies focus on, but you also mentioned there's some pitfalls from focusing only on that metric. Can you elaborate on that?

I think one of the clearest examples of those pitfalls I’ve seen in graphing that I looked at in my benchmarking where I plotted that percent pregnant by 150 days in milk versus pregnancy rate. I've got around over 30 herds on my benchmark and when I look at the trend on percent preg by 150 versus pregnancy rate, they really don't tell the same story. They don't match up.

If I order them by the highest percent preg by 150 as number one and then the lowest on the other end, the pregnancy rate line does not really follow that. I've got some herds that have pretty high pregnancy rates, but their percent pregnant at 150 days in milk is not that stellar. It's in the 60s or low 70s.

It certainly raised my eyebrow the first time I pulled that data together that way just to try to understand why that would be. I think one of the biggest bearings on that is really that impact that aborts can have. If a herd has been struggling with a bit higher abort rates, it's really not fully showing up in that preg rate.

It's very possible to have a high preg rate and a high abort rate. It's not possible to have a high abort rate and a high percent pregnant at 150 days in milk. I hope that makes sense.

Those numbers can get a little complicated, but the interactions between abort rate fully being accounted for in that percent pregnant by 150 days of milk and only partially being accounted for in preg rate is important to understand. 

(7:19) There's no doubt that many herds have pushed their voluntary wait periods out to 70, 80 or even 100 days in milk in some cases. How does this impact pregnancy rate?

Pregnancy rate is always looking at the cows that are past that voluntary wait period. If you've voluntary wait period out to 80 days, that's going to skew that. It's not going to change the pregnancy rate per se because you're changing when you're calculating it. If your conception rates are not stellar and you're out at 80, then more than likely you're going to end up with a lot more cows that are not a percent of the herd that's not pregnant by 150 days in milk.

So, in my opinion, we can earn our way to push that voluntary wait period out to 80 because it's not a great recipe for getting cows pregnant on time to have pushed the voluntary wait out and not have pretty darn high conception rates. It's just something to watch. I think using that percent pregnant by 150 days of milk as that big picture check-in to say, OK, I'm looking at my preg rate and happy with that direction, but whether it's quarterly, stepping back and looking at that percent pregnant by 150 days of milk and just seeing are we trending the right way? Are we getting that number higher so that we have fewer cows that have longer lactations than what's optimal?

(8:46) You know that do not breed protocols have an effect on pregnancy rate. Can you explain that more to our listeners?

Yes. So, do not breed protocols. I've been looking at what percent of the cows or what percent are do not breed animals in different herds, and there's a pretty broad range on that as well.

If I look at tracking that number with the percent pregnant at 150 days of milk, there's a little bit of correlation with some of those herds that are getting cows pregnant really quickly, having a little bit higher do not breed. But I think the important thing is to really understand are they calling them do not breed right at the beginning of the lactation or are they calling them do not breed after they've bred them three times? It's going to have more of an effect on your percent preg at 150 because those do not breed cows are pulled out of that. If you call them that very early in their lactation, decided right away that you're not going to breed them versus if you only call them do not breed after you've already tried a few times and then decided you're not going to try anymore, then there's very little impact that would have.

So, it's not a universal answer. It really depends on how the dairy is deciding who is going to be coded as a do not breed animal.

(10:07) Well, we really appreciate your time today. Can you give us a take-home message here? What's the things that our listeners need to remember from today's discussion?

Remember that one metric isn't going to give you the full picture. So, I think historically pregnancy rate's been it – all eyes on pregnancy rate. Everybody knows their preg rate. That's certainly the metric that has been talked about, but I think it's important to zoom out and also use that percent pregnant by 150 days of milk. If you're not looking at that, add that to your metrics as a primary one that you're looking at that helps you get outside of that the impact that voluntary waiting period has and do not breeds and gives you a metric that is more holistic that you can track over time and really be aiming for 75 to 85, certainly 80 plus is stellar, you know, as far as getting that percent pregnant by 150 days of milk.

And then lastly, if aborts is something that your herd has struggled with, that certainly is having an effect on reducing that percent pregnant by 150 days of milk and don't accept those high abort rates. It’s not normal. There's certainly an answer somewhere. I know those are hard to get to the bottom of sometimes, but that's a really important aspect of your reproductive success is making sure that once you get a cow pregnant, that she stays pregnant.

Thank you so much, Renee. If our listeners have any other questions, is there a place they can go to get answers?

Certainly. You can reach out to us at VirtusNutrition.com. And I also wanted to mention in the show notes for this episode, we'll add in those commands for percent pregnant at 150 days of milk so that those are handy as well for everyone.

% Preg by 150 (Dairy Comp command): Graph DOPN for RC<7\ST, use crosshairs to find accurate #, 100 minus % on graph.

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