Golden Dakota Farms

Donovan Coatzee

Elkton, SD, USA
http://Donovan%20Coatzee

Herd Type

Holstein

Herd Size

3100

Originally from South Africa, Donovan Coatzee’s family purchased Golden Dakota Farms in 2014. The South Dakota farm is currently home to 3,100 milking cows. Since the farm was built in 2005, Coatzee has made significant changes to better the operation.

Over a year ago, pregnancy rates at Golden Dakota Farms were around 21% and Coatzee wanted to improve. The summer months were especially challenging, with pregnancy rates taking a massive hit every year.

Looking to improve herd reproduction, Coatzee made the switch to ABS. After the switch to a double ovsynch program, pregnancy rates jumped by over 10 points into the low 30s. Even better, pregnancy rates held steady over the summer with the help of the ABS team and high-quality semen.

“We switched to ABS about a year and a half ago to implement a double ovsynch program but really we switched to ABS simply for their customer service. I believe they have the best bulls on the market and you know we have certain goals and traits that we want to implement into our cows and we’re seeing a lot of success now that we switch over to ABS it’s been really really nice to work with them.”

Donovan Coatzee

With support from ABS’s technical services team, Donovan also decided to utilize ABS’s sexed semen product to breed the next generation of high-quality heifers for Golden Dakota Dairy. By employing Sexcel®, which results in a much higher probability of obtaining a female calf than conventional semen, Donovan was also able to breed a large portion of the remaining herd with ABS’s leading ‘beef on dairy’ product, Beef InFocus™.

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