A.I. & BREEDING

Nutrition is one element of dairy management that can have a profound effect on the cow’s ability to conceive. Many key components of the ration – like energy levels – directly impact the dairy cow’s ability to become pregnant.

At this year’s American Dairy Science Association annual meeting held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in June, several invited speakers presented ideas about how they saw the dairy industry in 50 years.

Over the past decade, reproductive tools used to get cows pregnant have evolved tremendously. Automated activity monitoring technology has developed to deliver accurate detection of heats.

The simple solution to boosting dairy cattle conception rates (CR) is to improve reproductive management and cow environment, as these two general categories account for 96 percent of CR variation.

Advancements in technology, data collection and the future were top of mind during this year’s Canadian Dairy Cattle Improvement Industry Forum and CDN Annual General Meeting.

As concerns over falling reproductive performance escalated around the turn of the century, dairy cattle breeders and advisers decided to take on this trend by putting more emphasis on reproduction-related genetic traits (e.g., Daughter Pregnancy Rate [DPR] and Sire Conception Rate [SCR]) and seeking out effective heat detection tools.