Use performance targets to monitor, manage dairy herds

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Monitoring and measuring key performance indexes of dairy herds can be useful for making management decisions.

“You cannot manage what you don’t monitor and you cannot monitor what you don’t measure,” said Scott Poock, an Extension dairy vet for the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Missouri.

“You need to look at your own herd and decide what the numbers should be,” said Poock during a webinar hosted by Hoard’s Dairyman.

He talked about herds that used activity monitors to assist with breeding as well as herds that also utilize synchronization protocols.

“This herd has a voluntary waiting period of 60 days and the overall conception rate was 47%,” he said. “For first lactation animals, 44% of the services were sexed semen and 2% sexed semen for older cows.”

Another herd used activity monitors and synched their cows with Double Ovsynch.

“They will breed the cows if they get activity on the first Ovsynch and they have a 31% pregnancy rate,” Poock said.

“We want animals that are returning to estrus prior to the voluntary waiting period,” he said. “Animals who have had estrus heats prior to the voluntary waiting period have less days to first breeding and less days open.”

For pregnancy diagnosis, the National Animal Health Monitoring System in 2014 reported that 92% of dairy producers use ultrasound or palpation.

“About 5% of the producers were using blood or milk, but that’s probably higher today,” Poock said.

About 60% of the herds conduct pregnancy checks three times.

“They do an early pregnancy diagnosis, they do a reconfirm at 60 to 80 days and they do a check at dry off,” Poock said.

“About 20% of the herds do the first two checks and about 20% of the herds only do the early check,” he said. “I would like to see producers do at least two of the preg checks.”

For heifer reproduction goals, the veterinarian said, age at first calving should be between 22 and 23.5 months, pregnancy rate at 51%, 60% of the heifers pregnant in the first 21 days and 94% of the heifers receiving three or less services.

“I challenge you if you have a heifer that takes more than three times to get bred, she is probably not worth keeping,” Poock said.

“Heifers that were bred three or more times, versus heifers that were bred one or two times, there is not much difference in milk production,” he said.

“But there is a big difference in days open,” he noted. “This says if she is a problem breeder as a heifer, she will probably continue that later in life.”

Growing heifers correctly, Poock said, involves monitoring both weight and age.

“Target 55% of mature weight at first breeding,” the veterinarian said.

“When looking at genetics historically, we have said that fertility is lowly heritable, but even though it is lowly heritable, you can make change,” he said.

In a herd with 275 heifers, the heifer conception rate for the top heifers was 70% to 72% versus the bottom group with 49% conception rate.

“That is a huge difference, so maybe you should concentrate on the top 50% of the heifers and get your replacements from those females,” Poock said.

For days open, the professor said, the top heifers were open 25 days less.

“Fertility may be lowly heritable, but there is some heritability there and something you could be using for your dairy,” he said.

For pregnancy loss, the veterinarian evaluated two periods — the embryonic period, from conception to 45 days in gestation and the fetal period, from 45 days until birth.

“I looked at 10 herds and the percent of abortions was anywhere from 8.8% to 15% of the pregnancies,” he said. “And the loss of pregnancy is really occurring earlier.”