What is the best way to motivate your employees to improve their work performance? This is a common question of farmers hiring full-time employees. In addition to basic wages, many employers offer pay bonuses to encourage good job performance.

Dairy farming has become an increasingly complex activity today, mostly due to its multidisciplinary demands. It is essential for dairy farmers and their advisers to take a broad 360-degree view of the business.

Since 1970, the number of dairy farms in the U.S. has dropped by more than 93%, from more than 640,000 to around 40,000 in 2018. In an industry dominated by large organizations, smaller family farms face constant economic challenges.

Achieving a heat detection rate between 68 and 75 percent, conception rate as high as 40 to 48 percent and a pregnancy rate range between 30 and 37 percent is attainable, and top dairy herds out there are doing it.

In a dairy herd, efficiency and profitability can be achieved or lost depending on the successful balance between production and reproduction. Better reproductive performance benefits the herd directly by decreasing the days open and the average days in milk (DIM), placing cows closer to peak than to late lactation in their curve, and consequently producing more milk per cow per day.

Profitability in dairy operations is directly related to reproductive performance. The results of the preferred reproductive program in the dairy farm will be used to measure essential parameters of success, for instance, decreasing replacements due to reproductive failure and increasing the number of heifers for replacement due to reproductive success.