Determining the appropriate voluntary waiting period (VWP) is a critical component of any reproductive program. The optimal VWP may vary depending on the lactation number, season and the farm’s breeding strategy, and it is a fine line between maximizing fertility and ensuring timely conception.

Do you extend the same level of discipline and innovation applied to cows to your heifer program? Has your trend in heifer fertility improved over time?

The days of just making dairy replacement females as fast and furious as possible have taken a back seat to making just enough of the “right” replacement heifers to minimize rising raising costs and maintaining the proper heifer inventories for replacing milking cows that leave the herd.

Beef prices remain strong, proving strong incentives for dairy producers to stay bullish on beef-on-dairy investments. Just as there’s no single way to run a dairy farm, the same goes for getting involved in the beef-on-dairy market. Here are some factors to ruminate on.

Technology continues to push the envelope when it comes to reproductive efficiency. Automated monitoring systems and sort gates have proven to be productive investments for dairy farms across the country.

Health events are undesirable events in dairy farms and, in my opinion, are one of the biggest challenges the dairy industry has been facing. Although the incidence of some specific diseases – such as milk fever or clinical ketosis – has decreased in the last 20 years or so, the overall percentage of animals experiencing one or more diseases in the first 60 days after calving hasn’t changed.