Improve Dairy Reproduction: The Top 3 Areas to Investigate on Your Dairy

Publish date: 2.21.25 

What do consistent milk production, genetic improvement, and the future of a dairy all have in common?  

Yes, you guessed it. A pregnancy! The engine that powers a dairy is a pregnancy or, in other words, a calving event. Everything on a dairy starts with a calving event because a full-term pregnancy results in a lactation. Dairies are, first and foremost, in the milk production business, so it is key to create as many pregnancies as possible according to your needs to maximize calving events, drive milk production, and accelerate genetic progress. 

That’s why managing reproduction on a dairy is so critical. Pregnancies determine the future of the dairy. The cows in your facility must get pregnant to prepare your herd for future needs. A lackadaisical approach to managing reproduction could result in decreased milk production, ultimately leading to profit loss.  

There are three key areas to monitor when it comes to reproduction: the people taking care of your cows, the data being analyzed, and the animal herself. Knowing the importance of managing reproduction, we’ve compiled a list of things to investigate in each of those top three areas to improve reproduction on your dairy. Let’s uncover what to look at. 

Top Three Areas to Investigate to Improve Reproduction 

1. People: The first category to review when looking to improve reproduction is the people taking care of your cows. People must first understand ‘the why’ behind what they are doing and the implications—positive or negative—to the dairy based on their role. Improperly trained people are liabilities to your dairy. Your people need to feel part of the team and have a good team leader. Those two things almost always lead to more productive, compliant, and enthusiastic employees.  

When investigating this area, answer the following questions to uncover areas for improvement.  

1. Do you have a good team leader?  
2. Is your team compliant with your management practices and Standard Operating Procedures?  
3. Is there consistency in heat detection on your dairy? Are your cows exposed to semen in a consistent and timely manner? 
4. Are your technicians accurate in their breeding technique? 
5. Does your team understand and comply with synchronization protocols? 
6. Is your team handling semen properly?  
7. Is your team handling and storing synchronization and other drugs correctly? 

2. The Animal: The second and likely most important area to investigate when looking to improve reproduction is the animal herself. Managing reproduction starts in the previous lactation. Understanding the life cycle of a dairy female and her ideal state is the key to a successful reproduction plan. The most critical period in a dairy female’s life cycle is transition, or the time when a cow shifts from being dry to actively lactating as a poor transition can create a ripple effect of mayhem for an entire lactation or more.  

Another piece of the puzzle of knowing a cow’s ideal state is ensuring she is in an environment promoting cow comfort. A comfortable cow is a more productive cow. A good environment will allow for better expression of genetic potential as compared to a poor environment.  

The following questions can help you walk through the life cycle of your cow herd and help you develop an environment where they can thrive.   

1. How did she dry off? 
2. What was her calving event experience, good or bad? Did she endure additional stress due to a hard calving, pull, or twin birth? 
3. What was her body condition score at dry off, calving, and by 30-60 DIM? 
4. Is she receiving proper nutrition?  
5. How many days between her last calving event and first breeding? 
6. How many days between her last calving event and conception? 
7. Why do most females leave your herd? What is your culling rate? 
8. Is she up to date on all vaccinations and on a proper health protocol?  
9. Is her environment one that promotes cow comfort?  
   • To start analyzing your environment, look at your facility design with heat stress in mind and your parlor with milk quality.  
   • Evaluate resting time, rumination time, and disease incidence, particularly lameness and mastitis, among other proxies of cow welfare. 

3. Data: The third area is data—the power that runs the dairy. It gets that title because you should be using your data to drive your decisions. This area is not just about the data; it’s also about the decisions you are making based on the data. To improve reproduction based on data, you need to ask yourself if you are focusing on the right metrics and ensure you are submitting good data. Remember, the age-old saying stands true: bad data IN equals bad data OUT.  

Below are the main metrics to monitor and make decisions based on.  

1. Insemination Rate (IR) and Pregnancy Rate (PR): the percentage of eligible cows that are bred and become pregnant, respectively, in a 21-day period 
2. Conception Rate (CR): the percentage of successful inseminations that result in pregnancy  
3. It is critical to analyze this metric based on a specific timeframe. 
4. You can analyze this metric even further through filtering it by bull, by technician, by day of the week, etc.  
5. Voluntary Waiting Period (VWP): the time between a cow giving birth and when she is ready to be inseminated next.
   • Looking at the VWP from a viewpoint of pregnancies by DIM demonstrates how efficient you are at turning an open herd into a pregnant one.  

How Can ABS Help?  

You don’t have to manage reproduction on your own. ABS is here to help you in your journey to improve reproduction. We can assist you in taking an entire dairy investigative approach. Here are a few ways we can help support you!  

• Host hands-on and on-farm reproductive training and assist with team accountability 
• Identify opportunities for increased pregnancy production 
• Design a program to help you create more pregnancies and see the value of your genetic investment 
• Assist in data management and analysis of reproduction data 
• Aid in the standardization of Standard Operating Procedures 
• Provide tools that show the economic impact of reproduction 

Good reproduction allows you to increase selection intensity, utilize enhanced technologies like sexed semen and embryo transfer, get animals pregnant sooner, and ultimately accelerate your genetic progress. But genetics also matter in this scenario. Good genetics mean better future pregnancies for dairy and more profitability for the dairy. Better genetics can also lead to better fertility (CCR) as you continue to progress genetically.  And everyone’s job on a dairy is made easier when better genetics are utilized.  

We are not in the business of selling products to dairies. We are in the business of helping dairies problem solve issues and increase profitability through consistent and reliable pregnancy creation. One of our passions is helping our customers create and manage a successful reproduction program! 

Want to improve reproduction but looking for help? Contact your Genetic Advisor or complete the form below.