Keeping calves alive means you have a successful calf-raising program, right? While it’s true that low mortality is a critical metric, in today’s economic environment many other parameters contribute to calf-raising success.

On a typical day, how often do cows interact with people on your dairy? It’s common for a dairy team to mingle with a herd at least two or three times for milking, again if it’s a herd health day, again for breeding, again if pen shifts are on the schedule and probably again if any additional management interventions are needed.

A decade ago, the National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS) Dairy 2007 study showed the average voluntary waiting period (VWP) on U.S. dairy farms was 54.8 days in milk and did not differ by herd size.

With no let-up in the need to cultivate profitability, dairies constantly seek ways to manage expenses while increasing income opportunities.

For dairy nutritionists and dairy managers, it’s frustrating to learn that the ration delivered to cows is not always the ration that was formulated. A diet can’t do its job when it’s not correctly mixed, delivered or managed.

The reasons for seeking optimal reproductive results in your dairy herd are many. However, given the current dairy economic climate, the financial consequences of poor reproductive performance are even more top-of-mind for most dairy farmers.