Dairy Reproduction
Researchers are beginning to step back and look at the bigger picture, examining how the virus affects cows not only in the days and weeks after infection, but what it may mean for their health and performance long after.
When replacement heifers are limited, every pregnancy counts.
Long before calving, subtle biological signals can influence the health, growth, and future productivity of a calf. Understanding and utilizing these signals could lead to the next revolution in reproductive management for cattle.
As dairy producers increasingly use beef semen to capitalize on calf value, longer gestation lengths are straining pre-fresh pens, pushing the industry to rethink cow flow, facilities, and future genetics.
Facilities, genetics, nutrition, stockmanship and marketing are some of the impotant factors to consider in the transition process.
Lexi Anderson is a spirited kid who’s always supporting those around her. But Lexi’s big heart is now what’s needing saved, and it’s a constant showing of love and support that’s getting this family through.
While there are a myriad of factors affecting profitability on a dairy farm, the transition period continues to stand out as the most critical phase.
Despite the myths, you can have both high production and high fertility.
These commonly overlooked issues are holding your herd back.
A massive question dairy producers often ask themselves is who should be raising replacement heifers. Should they be raised by the producer, contracted out and customed raised, or should they be purchased?
Heat stress undoubtedly causes setbacks for cows. But a growing body of research shows it also impacts the calves they are carrying, and possibly even the generation after that.
When a cow freshens during the fall or winter, she tends to produce less colostrum than her herd mates who calved in spring and summer. It’s no coincidence. Now research is shedding some “light” on the situation.
Getting cows pregnant is vital to keeping the pipeline full. According to Jeremey Natzke of Wayside Dairy, a 35% plus pregnancy rate equates to an outstanding repro program and a number his dairy worked hard to achieve.
Could reproductive hormones have an impact on the gut microbiota of cattle.
Compared to Holsteins, is calving time with crossbreds more difficult in terms of calf weight, stillbirth, gestation length, or dystocia?
While many alternatives to palpation have evolved over the years, a quick, convenient, on-farm pregnancy test kit has remained elusive...until now.
With the cost of inflation impacting every corner of a dairy, the producer’s breeding strategy has been forced to become finetuned. More and more producers are keeping just enough replacements to fill the pipeline,.
Veterinarians have at least eight options for doing a cesarean section (c-section) in cattle, but most rely on only one.
Simply producing a black calf if not enough if the dairy industry wants to make permanent inroads into successful crossbreeding.
The intricacies of transition-cow nutrition and its role in lactation success may be made a bit easier with the Liver Functionality Index.
Here’s a breakdown of just how much these seven transition period diseases could be costing you.
“The more we understand about how specific nutrition components influence health and performance responses, the more we can support cows in their production cycles.”
Over-conditioned cows that lose weight after calving subsequently have lower fertility, produce fewer quality embryos and face higher rates of health problems.
Moving to 100% polled genetics is an air-tight method of dispelling consumer concerns about dehorning pain. But the wheels of genetic progress turn relatively slowly in cattle.
As dairy caregivers, we see “Poor Doer Syndrome.” These are cows that struggle for unknown reasons until they subsequently develop an infectious disease, a surgically correctable condition or are culled.
A highly fatal intestinal disease of adult cows, Hemorrhagic Bowel Syndrome (HBS), draws concerns from dairy producers, veterinarians and nutritionists, as it is also known as the sudden death disease of dairy cattle.
Reproduction clicks along like a well-oiled machine at Schanbacher Acres near Atkins, Iowa, thanks in part to the farm’s routine use of blood pregnancy tests for the past 17 years.