Today, many dairy producers are integrating genomic testing into their daily breeding and selection decisions or contemplating doing so. It is remarkable to think that a tissue sample collected from the ear, a hair pulled from the tail switch or a drop of blood spotted onto a card from a day-old calf can get you a genetic evaluation equal to progeny tests on many daughters of sires.

Some use it to increase marketability of show cattle, and for others, it’s used to determine production in a commercial herd. Regardless of the specific reason, genomic testing has been part of the dairy industry for more than five years and has proven effective with diverse dairies across the world.

Endless Mountains Veterinary Center PC (EMVC) in Rome, Pennsylvania, recognized the shift in the dairy industry from conventional embryo transfer (ET) to oocyte pick-up (OPU) and in vitro fertilization (IVF), and cracked open the books over a four-year span to research as much as possible before launching its new OPU center earlier this spring.

Dairy producers can now select for cows genetically designed to thrive in commercial dairy environments.

Record milk and beef prices and rising replacement heifer prices offer commercial dairy producers options to manage their herd inventory. Herds with adequate supplies of replacement heifers have greater opportunity to cull low-producing cows and take advantage of high beef prices.

Researchers and the dairy science community joined together in July in Kansas City, Missouri, for the 2014 Joint Annual Meeting held by the American Dairy Science Association (ADSA) and the American Society on Animal Science (ASAS).

There are many tools available in the toolbox of livestock managers that can be used to maximize reproductive efficiencies. One of these tools is blood-based pregnancy tests. Over the last 10 years, this technology has been gaining in popularity as a tool to find the open cow.

Worldwide, dairy producers have put a great deal of focus on improving efficiencies through standard operating procedures, herd nutrition and reproductive strategies. But now producers are looking for additional ways to improve herd performance. One of these new trends in reproduction is a concept called Advanced Reproductive Management (ARM).

The definitive goal of breeding is to select favorable traits that will prevail in the next generation, and crossbreeding could be one way to do that.

Selection indexes are great tools. The two main U.S. genetic indexes, Total Performance Index (TPI) and Net Merit (NM$), have played a large role in the genetic improvement of the Holstein breed throughout the years.