From the perspective of an A.I. company, the strategic breeding and genetic decisions you make today have a huge impact on the profitability and bottom line of your future milking herd. However, it’s important to remember that the only way to realize the maximum benefits and effects of the genetics you use is to maintain top-notch, progressive, strategic management practices.

There’s a great deal of industry buzz around programs and technology that promise to create healthier cows for your herd, but don’t forget about the tool you already have available.

A2 milk has created recent industry buzz in dairy news. As consumers continuously look for new ways to eat healthy, A2 milk is a trend that emerges on their radar.

Polled dairy cattle trace back at least as far as pedigree records have been kept. The polled gene in dairy cattle is dominant over the horned gene, yet horned cattle are still much more prevalent in the global dairy population because few producers ever chose to select for polled cattle as part of their breeding program.

The brutal fact is that heritability is often misunderstood.

“Give me a bull that’s over 1,000 pounds of milk and positive for DPR.” Does this sound like you describing sire selection criteria for your dairy? If so, you are among many dairy producers who are leaving extra pounds of milk and additional pregnancies on the table.

Do the continually changing industry selection indexes and recent genetic base change have you questioning what that means for your genetic plan? The recent genetic base change caused an industry-wide rollback for most traits for all bulls, cows and heifers. Previously, we determined proof values for a sire by comparing his daughters to the average cow born in 2005.

While certainly not a new concept, inbreeding has become a hot topic in recent years. Producer concern is on the rise over whether genomics is creating too much inbreeding in the dairy cattle population. The worry is that there will soon be limited options to which a herd can be bred to avoid negative effects of inbreeding.

Selection indexes are great tools because they combine all significant traits into one. They get us away from setting minimum criteria for particular traits, which allows us to make progress for many different traits all at once.

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.