Creating extra heifers provides you many intriguing options – the option to expand, the option to sell extra heifers and the option to sell your low-producing cows.

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.

A dairyman recently asked, “What is the true value of a mating program?” This common question certainly deserves some attention. Many producers around the world employ a mating program within their herd and have done so for many years.

In every dairy producer’s ideal world, the norm would be a whole herd of cows that efficiently produces high volumes of milk during several lactations with no transition problems, metabolic diseases, udder health issues or conformation faults leading to an early cull from the herd. In other words, the ideal is a whole herd of “four-event” cows, whose only recorded events throughout a lactation are freshening, a single breeding, pregnancy diagnosis and dry-off.

Everyone wants enough replacement heifers to maintain or even grow their herd size. Producers have achieved this goal with relative ease throughout the past 20 years. While the trend during that time has shown a decline in the number of U.S. dairy cows, the heifer population has remained fairly constant. This means the heifer population as a percentage of the total cow population has been on the rise.

Stature, rump angle, teat length, teat placement – do they impact longevity and reproduction? In this article, we’ll look at these four linear type traits often thought to impact performance. Perception is not always reality, so we look to the data to find the true answers.

No concept has been talked about more in the dairy cattle breeding world over the past few years than “genomics.” This compelling science has resurfaced a global intrigue for genetics. It is a very compelling science and has made genetics as popular of a topic as it was following the advent of artificial insemination. But why is genomics such a big deal? Because it really works.