On a dairy, the main discussion isn’t usually about what a cow does best. It’s typically about her weakest link, which leads to her culling. This might be udder concerns, reproductive issues, production deficits, injury, lameness, transition diseases, and productive life. Which is why creating productive, healthy, fertile, and long-lasting cows is so critical. They are your most profitable cows—year after year!
If you aren’t considering the longevity of your cow herd, you should be. Exclusively chasing yield can result in negative short- and long-term effects. Thus, we don’t suggest single trait selection and believe a comprehensive herd longevity evaluation is necessary for a profitable, efficient, and sustainable farm.
What is required for cow longevity?
- Above-average production
- Pregnancy conception within two services
- Low somatic cell count
- No mastitis susceptibility
- Appropriate stature to fit within the milk parlor and free stalls
- Proper udder structure and teat placement for efficient milking
- Quick transition from the calving pen
- No transition diseases.
Genetic progress is all about making better cows, faster! The only way to do that is by selecting the right genetics, creating the right number of heifers, and deploying the right product type—sexed or beef—into the right cows. And herd longevity touches all three!
Create a customized genetic plan. Profit from genetic progress.
Prioritize Productive Life
Productive Life (PL) is vital to a dairy because it affects many key operation areas like culling rate, milk production, replacement rate, beef cross production, operational efficiency, emissions intensity, and sustainability. Today, the industry is shifting, focusing on cow lifespan as fewer replacements are available. Also, older cows produce more milk and reduce the need for more heifers, opening more pregnancies to be used in beef cross production and generating increased profit all around. Productive, healthy, fertile, and long-lasting cows that are profitable every year are the ones you want in your herd.
Because balance is a focus of our breeding program, ABS has the highest average PL score of bulls marketed.
Keeping PL in check results in a lower culling rate, meaning you:
- Incur less heifer rearing costs
- Can sell more high-quality beef cross calves
- Can select fewer and better dams to produce the next generation
- Have fewer 2-year-olds as a percentage of the milking herd
Delayed culling puts more money in your pockets up front from beef on dairy production and increases your milk output from the additional lactation two cows in your parlor.
Productive Life Impacts Your Profitability
Let’s take a simple longevity scenario. Which of the following sires will create more Combined Fat and Protein in a typical 33% cull rate herd: a high production bull with +150 Combined Fat and Protein (CFP) OR a balanced bull with +110 CFP but +1 PL higher? Check out the math.
By properly addressing Productive Life, you can delay culling where needed and positively influence production, lifespan, and days in milk, increasing short-term cash flow and driving long-term profitability.
Trust in ABS for the Long-Haul
ABS Global aims to support you with strategic and customized genetic planning and reviews, technical support, reproductive consultation, and more. While selecting solely for PL sounds like a no-brainer to positively influence profitability, it all depends on the right, dialed-in genetic plan. Again, we strongly advise against single-trait selection.
A strategic plan must be in place to harvest all the benefits of selecting for Productive Life, meaning just using the highest PL bull won’t work. Conversely, focusing only on Combined Fat and Protein at the expense of Productive Life also won’t help you reach your genetics goals, meaning you don’t have to settle for low PL to get high fat and protein production.
Chasing extremes in any one area can be detrimental elsewhere, which is why we recommend the use of balanced sires to produce healthy, fertile, and long-lasting cows that are profitable year after year. When you do that, you drive genetic progress, efficiency, and profit without the fear of setbacks.
Profit from genetic progress with a customized plan from ABS that keeps longevity in check!