Daughter Pregnancy Rate

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Archive for Daughter Pregnancy Rate

It’s Not Your Fans, It’s Your Genetics: Why Cows Quit Breeding at THI 60

Saturday, May 30th, 2026

At THI 60, some cow families keep breeding and some melt—same barn, same ration, same fans. That second group is quietly running your days open up 40 and costing 200–320 CAD a head.

Executive Summary: Once the temperature-humidity index hits about 60, fertility starts bleeding—well before the 68-to-72 milk-loss threshold most cooling triggers are set to. Here’s the part hardware won’t fix: the loss isn’t even across the barn. Some cow families keep cycling and conceiving through July; the melters crash—piling up extra services, dragging days open out by weeks, and dominating the summer cull and recheck lists even after you’ve maxed out fans and soakers. Run the math and it stings: at roughly 5–8 CAD per extra day open, 40 lost days runs 200–320 CAD a head, and if just 30 cows in a 200-cow herd carry that pattern every summer, you’re looking at 6,000–9,600 CAD a year before the wasted semen straws and vet rechecks. The fix is genetic, and you already own the tools—sort three to five years of June-through-September breedings by cow family in DairyComp, flip the bottom 15–20% of summer-fragile lines to beef semen, and screen replacement heifers for heat resilience before economic index. None of it rescues this July; it changes the daughters you freshen in 2028. If you’ve spent on cooling and conception still craters every summer, this is the lever you haven’t pulled yet.

It’s a composite scene, based on how this plays out on many farms. The fans are running. Soakers click on and off in rhythm. Steam hangs in the feed lane, and the cows look about as comfortable as Holsteins get on a humid July afternoon. A herd owner walks the high group, stops at a tall cow giving 90 pounds, and says he can’t afford to cull her.

But his summer breeding record says otherwise. Year after year, once the temperature-humidity index reaches about 60, conception drops sharply—and the heat-stress damage doesn’t fall evenly across the barn. Some cow families keep breeding. Others fall apart. The cooling money is already spent. And it still isn’t enough, because the weak point isn’t just airflow. It’s genetics.

What’s Really at Stake When THI Hits 60?

Spring can make any herd look smarter than it is. Body condition holds, first cut is moving, and reproduction finally looks the way the protocol sheet promised. Then the air turns sticky, THI sits in the 60s for a few days, and the picture shifts.

You see it fast enough in the reports: conception slides through June to September, days open stretch, and health problems like mastitis, metritis, and lameness start stacking up after the first real heat run. Graph three to five years of records, and you can watch the operation slide from profit mode into damage control as THI climbs from the 50s into the 60s and 70s.

That part isn’t breaking news. The sharper question is this: what happens when you sort the same summer data by sire line or cow family?

In real herd terms, two different “herds” can be standing under the same roof. One group—the stayers—gives up a little fertility but stays functional. The other—the melters—loses far more ground in the same THI band, then dominates the summer cull list, the recheck list, and the hospital pen. Same barn. Same ration. Same breeding crew. Different cows.

Why THI 60, Not 68?

For years, the working number was 68 to 72—the point where milk yield visibly drops and most cooling triggers are set. Fertility tells a different story. It starts bleeding earlier.

Across Holstein datasets from Europe, Australia, and subtropical regions, researchers have found fertility traits weakening below the old 68-to-72 rule of thumb—often around 60 or lower. Recent barn-level coverage pegs the same early onset, with heat effects on production showing up near 68°F THI and fertility taking hits sooner. The mechanism isn’t mysterious: the developing egg and the early embryo are heat-sensitive in windows that open before a cow looks visibly stressed, which is why a “mild” stretch of weather still shows up six weeks later as an empty cow.

So the practical takeaway is blunt. If your cooling trigger is set to the milk-loss threshold, your fertility losses started before the fans ramped up. The genetic gap between heat-tough and heat-fragile cows shows up while the weather still feels merely uncomfortable rather than dangerous.

How the Melters Give Themselves Away

Go back to that 90-pound cow. On a cool April morning, she looks like the right kind. Big frame. Big appetite. The kind that makes a herd owner feel better about his feed bill. Then July shows up and starts asking different questions.

Advisors working with heat-sensitive herds describe a pattern that keeps repeating in high-yield families:

Lower summer conception: In the THI 60-to-70 window, some families can run 10 to 15 points behind more-resilient lines within the same herd, advisors report.
More days open: Those same cows often drag several extra weeks compared with the stayers standing beside them.
More post-heat wreckage: Mastitis, displaced abomasum, and lameness show up more often after sustained heat events.

Metric	Heat-Resilient Families (Stayers)	Heat-Fragile Families (Melters)	Warning Level
Cool-season conception rate	35–38%	34–37%	Normal
Summer (THI 60–70) conception	30–33%	18–22%	🔴 Critical
Extra days open vs. cool-season	+5–10 days	+35–45 days	🔴 Critical
Services per conception (summer)	1.8–2.2	3.0–4.5+	🔴 Critical
Post-heat health events (mastitis, DA, lameness)	Low–moderate	High; repeat offenders	🔴 Critical
Summer cull / recheck list presence	Occasional	Dominates list	🔴 Critical
Cool → summer conception drop	<5 points	10–15+ points	🔴 Actionable threshold
Per-cow annual summer cost (40 days open)	~$50–100 CAD	$200–320 CAD	🔴 Critical

When you sort by family rather than by the whole herd, the picture gets cleaner. Advisors describe cool-weather conception in the high 30s for some herds, with the most heat-sensitive families dropping into the low 20s at mid-60s THI while steadier families hold closer to the low 30s. Treat those as field observations, not a published dataset—the direction matches the heat-stress research, but the exact spread will vary by herd.

Here’s the tell that separates a genetics problem from a management one. Bad ventilation in the summer hammers everybody. The whole high group slides together, the fresh pen backs up, and the slump tracks the weather. A genetics problem is choosier. The same registration prefixes, the same maternal lines, show up open and rechecked while their pen-mates—same air, same water, same TMR—keep cycling and conceiving.

When the slump has favorites, you’re not looking at a fan that quit. You’re looking at inheritance. Melter families tend to reappear in the same ugly categories—open, repeat breeder, multiple health hits after heat—even when barns upgrade cooling or change protocols. At some point, that’s not bad luck. That’s an inherited weakness you’re choosing to keep breeding.

What Genetics Are Hiding in Your Summer Reports

Most herds already own the tools to start changing this. They just use them in the wrong order.

Too often, breeders start with Net Merit, TPI, Pro$, or LPI and then take a glance at fertility as a secondary screen. For heat resilience, flip that order. Filter first for the traits that predict summer survival. Then let your total merit index sort what’s left.

A heat-friendlier sire profile usually looks like this:

Positive fertility signal: Clearly favorable Daughter Pregnancy Rate or equivalent, not simply “acceptable.” Under heat load, even modest genetic differences in fertility show up larger.
Longevity and health behind it: Positive productive life or herd life, plus better-than-average udder health, metabolic disease, and lameness signals. Those traits earn their keep when cows are already carrying heat.
Moderate body size: Neutral to slightly negative size and stature, backed by sound feet and legs. Bigger cows produce more metabolic heat and shed it harder in humid conditions.

On the female side, genomic testing is where this gets practical, and it deserves more than a footnote.

How Genomic Testing Changes the Replacement Math

Parent averages are a guess. For low-heritability traits like fertility, that guess is especially soft—a daughter of a high-DPR bull and a fragile dam could land anywhere. Genomic testing tightens the guess by reading the calf’s own genotype, and the reliability gain on fertility, productive life, health, and size is exactly where it matters most for heat work.

Here’s the practical move. When test results come back, stop treating every heifer as an automatic keeper. Rank them on a heat-resilience screen first—fertility, productive life, health, moderate size—and only then sort by your economic index. The heifers that clear both bars are the ones you breed to sexed semen and build depth from. The bottom slice, the ones soft on fertility and health with high-stature signals, are your beef-cross candidates regardless of how their milk proof reads.

There’s a cost-control angle too. Testing isn’t free, but a herd that’s already retaining too many heifers is paying to raise its own future July problems. Aiming the genomic screen at heat resilience turns a sunk testing cost into a culling-and-mating decision you’d otherwise make blind. Even without a tidy national heat-tolerance index, this beats guessing from pedigree on the exact traits that crack under heat.

How to Spot Heat-Stress Infertility in Your Own Breeding Records

None of this works if the data stays locked in whole-herd averages. The good news: you don’t need new software. Tools like DairyComp and PCDART already break reproduction down by service sire and date—DairyComp’s BREDSUM summary has long been used by consultants to rank conception and pregnancy rate by sire.

Start with a date filter. Flag every service bred between June 1 and September 30 across the last three to five years—that’s your heat-window cohort. Wisconsin extension has even published the DairyComp commands for spotting heat-stress fingerprints in milk, components, and reproduction records, so the workflow isn’t exotic. Then run conception rate and days open two ways: once by sire, once by maternal line or cow-family group.

The split that matters is the gap. Look at each family’s summer conception against its own cool-weather number, not just the herd average.

Walking One Cow Family Through Three Summers

Picture how this reads on screen once the cohort is built. Take a single maternal line—call it the family behind your 90-pound cow—and pull its bred-to-conception record across three summers next to a steadier line in the same barn.

The fragile line shows a familiar shape: cool-season services convert fine, then June-through-September conception sags, three or more services per conception pile up on the same cow IDs, and days open on that line run weeks past the steady family standing in the next pen. Do it for three summers running and the pattern either holds or it doesn’t—that’s the whole point of the exercise. A family that runs 35% in spring and 33% in August is holding. A family that runs 36% in spring and 21% in August is melting, and it’s that second number quietly steering your cull list and your recheck sheet.

One caution before you act on the sort. Low-heritability fertility traits are noisy, and a single hot summer on a handful of cows isn’t a verdict. You want a repeated pattern—the same lines collapsing across multiple summers—before you start retiring genetics. One bad August is weather. Three is a trend.

Does the Barn Math Actually Hold Up?

Yes—and it’s worth being honest about where the numbers come from.

A 2019 Japanese Holstein study estimated the economic value of days open at 399 to 857 yen per day, depending on region and scenario. That’s the original published figure. At the 2019 average exchange rate of about 0.0122 CAD per yen, that works out to roughly 5 to 10 Canadian dollars per extra day open—call it 5 to 8 CAD as a conservative working range.

Walk it through one cow. Say a melter-family member tacks on 40 extra days open during a hot season—not a stretch when conception in that line drops into the low 20s. At the conservative end, that’s 40 × 5 CAD = 200 CAD. At the upper end, 40 × 8 CAD = 320 CAD. Now scale it as a what-if: if just 30 cows in a 200-cow herd carried that pattern every summer, the drag would land somewhere around 6,000 to 9,600 CAD a year—before you count the extra semen straws, the vet rechecks, and the higher odds those cows leave on a cull truck. That’s a recurring line item hiding inside “we had a tough summer.”

North American field economics land in the same zone. In Bullvine’s March 2026 analysis of Arizona heat-stress economics, a 3.5-point DPR gap worked out to roughly $157 to $367 per daughter over three lactations, using DCRC/Fetrow figures—often enough to beat a 150-point NM$ advantage once heat-driven days open and culls hit the ledger. So the Japanese figure isn’t an outlier. It’s a reasonable, conservative read on a cost that quietly repeats in the same families, season after season.

And there’s a bigger reason to care. Net Merit modeling and field analyses have repeatedly shown that better fertility and longevity often return more lifetime profit than chasing a little more milk from cows that don’t stay problem-free. The trade-off isn’t “milk versus nothing.” It’s usually “a little less peak versus fewer summer losses.”

Four Paths That Actually Change the Herd

There’s no perfect answer here. Herd size, replacement pressure, data quality, and appetite for short-term pain all matter. But there are four realistic ways to start.

Path 1: The One-Rule-Tonight Plan

Best fit: You’ve already invested in decent cooling and want to stop making the problem worse this breeding season.

Pull three to five years of records. Sort conception and days open for services bred June through September—or in the THI 60-to-70 range—by sire and by cow family.

Then draw a hard line under the bottom 15 to 20 percent of families for summer fertility. Those cows get beef semen only. No dairy replacements from them this year. At the same time, push your best fertility-and-health sires, ideally with moderate stature, onto the families that held together.

What it fixes: It stops fragile genetics from quietly filling your heifer pens. What it can hurt: If replacement numbers are already tight and you don’t tighten sexed-semen use on your better families, you can come up short on heifers. Do this within 30 days: Pull the last three to five summers of breeding records, rank families by summer conception, and decide which lines go beef-only now. That won’t rescue this July. It can absolutely change the calves you freshen in 2028.

Path 2: The Genomic Replacement Filter

Best fit: You’re already genomic-testing heifers, or you’re close to it.

Once results arrive, stop acting like every heifer deserves the same future. For heat resilience, keeper heifers should sit at or above herd median for fertility, productive life, and health, without extreme stature or body-weight signals. After that, sort by your preferred economic index.

What it fixes: It keeps you from raising the next batch of beautifully bred summer disappointments. What it can hurt:Get too aggressive too fast, and you can tighten your replacement pipeline before your better families have built depth.

Path 3: The Hot-Pens-First Sire List

Best fit: You can pinpoint where heat hits hardest—fresh pens, high group, specific barns—and you track breeding by pen.

Build a tighter sire list just for those groups. Every bull on it clears your fertility, productive life, health, and moderate-size thresholds. And where your evaluation system offers THI-slope or heat-tolerance breeding values, use them.

What it fixes: It matches your toughest environments with daughters more likely to hold together. What it can hurt:Genetics won’t save a pen with poor airflow, weak water access, or cooling that’s failing in plain sight.

Path 4: The Full Three-Year Reset

Best fit: Heat stress is a recurring profit problem in your region, and you’re ready to let data make the uncomfortable calls.

Year 1 — Triage: Pull three to five years of summer data, identify stayers and melters at THI 60 to 70, and flip the worst families to beef only.
Year 2 — Aim replacements harder: Genomic-test heifers, keep only those at or above herd median in fertility, productive life, and health with moderate size, and rebuild your sire list around bulls whose daughters actually held up through summer.
Year 3 — Tighten the cull gate: Move repeat offenders up the list—especially cows from fragile families that have now shown the same summer pattern twice.

Advisors who’ve watched herds follow that kind of plan describe a familiar payoff. Summer fertility still dips. But the crater shrinks, and the spread between the best and worst families tightens as more resilient cows make up the milking string. That’s the real outcome. Not a miracle. Not a silver bullet. Just a different herd.

Quick Comparison: Which Path Fits Your Barn?

Path	Best For	Key Action	Payoff Timeline	Main Risk
1. One-Rule-Tonight	Cooling done; act this season	Beef semen on bottom 15–20% of summer families	Calves freshening ~2028	Heifer shortfall if sexed semen not tightened
2. Genomic Filter	Already testing or near-ready	Screen heifers for fertility, PL, health before economic index	Next replacement group	Pipeline tightens too fast
3. Hot-Pens-First Sires	Breed by pen; know your hot spots	Dedicated sire list cleared for fertility + moderate size	Current-year matings	Won’t fix broken cooling infrastructure
4. Three-Year Reset	Recurring regional heat problem	Year 1: triage; Year 2: aim replacements; Year 3: tighten cull gate	Milking string by Year 3	Needs multi-year data discipline

What This Means for Your Operation

Use this like a working audit, not a sermon. Each line is a decision you can make in the next breeding cycle.

Pull three to five years of summer breedings and sort by family. If the same lines keep collapsing at THI 60 to 70 while others hold closer to cool-weather performance, treat it as a selection issue—not just a facilities issue.
Check which bulls you’re still using in your hardest pens. If your hottest groups are still getting high-milk, low-fertility, taller sires, you may be breeding more July problems on purpose.
Audit your replacement policy. Are you keeping heifers because they’re balanced for fertility, productive life, and health—or because their milk proof looks good enough to keep the peace?
Set a cull threshold for repeat summer offenders. Two summers running with clearly extended days open, or three or more services per conception in the June-to-September window, is a defensible line in the sand.
Split your reports by THI band, not just by month. Even a simple under-60 versus over-60 comparison can tell you whether your cooling trigger is set too late.
Decide where the next dollar works harder. Another hardware purchase might help. But on some farms, stopping replacements from the worst 15 to 20 percent of summer families changes more than the next fan line does.

Key Takeaways

If you’ve already spent on cooling and conception still crashes every July, the next lever is genetic: stop making daughters from families that melt at THI 60, and concentrate your best semen on the families that don’t.
If the summer slump has favorites—the same maternal lines open while their pen-mates conceive—treat it as inheritance, not airflow. A fan problem hits everybody; a genetics problem is choosier.
If certain families lose far more ground in the THI 60-to-70 range while others stay near their cool-weather baseline, that’s a repeatable signal worth breeding around—but confirm it across multiple summers before retiring genetics.
If you genomic-test, screen heat resilience before economic index, so a strong milk proof can’t sneak a fragile heifer past the gate.
If you flip the bottom 15 to 20 percent of summer-fragile families to beef semen now and protect replacements from the stayers, you start changing your heifer pipeline without culling a single cow today.

The cows that matter most in your breeding plan aren’t the ones that impress you in April. They’re the ones you still trust in late July. Three summers from now, your barn will be full of daughters from the decisions you’re making this breeding season. Are they built for your climate—or are you still breeding April heroes that can’t cash a summer milk cheque?

Run Your Numbers

Pregnancy Rate Economics Calculator — This article says your melter families are dragging days open up 40 and bleeding 200–320 CAD a head. Put a real number on it: the calculator translates days-open savings, extra pregnancies, and cull impact into net annual ROI for your herd before you change a single breeding decision.

Complete references and supporting documentation are available upon request by contacting the editorial team at editor@thebullvine.com.

Learn More

Is Genomic Testing Worth the Investment? — Arms you with a definitive cost-benefit framework to measure the real-world dollar return of heifer genomic screening versus the overhead of blind-raising replacements that risk crashing during peak summer stress.
The Shift to Beef: Maximizing the Value of Lower Tier Cows — Breaks down tactical mating frameworks to aggressively capitalize on beef-on-dairy strategies, transforming your herd’s underlying “melter” family liability into immediate, premium-earning feeder calf cash flow.
Breeding for the Future: Why Reproductive Longevity Trumps Peak Milk — Exposes the hidden financial drain of chasing high-fluid-milk sires, proving why shifting selection criteria toward sustainable daughter pregnancy rates and extended herd life consistently secures greater lifetime margin per stall.

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Categories : Genetics & Breeding

Tags : beef-on-dairy, Daughter Pregnancy Rate, genomic testing heifers, heat stress fertility, summer conception rate, THI threshold

The $360 DPR Mistake: Why +950 NM$ Holstein Bulls Bleed Pregnancies in Arizona Heat

Tuesday, March 10th, 2026

One DC305 report, a 15-point Preg‑by‑150 gap — and the realization that +950 NM$ Holstein bulls were bleeding pregnancies in Arizona heat.

Executive Summary: A large Arizona Holstein freestall used DC305 to uncover a 15‑point Preg‑by‑150 gap between winter‑ and summer‑fresh cows on the same repro program. The cooling system checked out; the real problem was a sire stack of +950 NM$ Holstein bulls that couldn’t hold fertility once THI stayed high. Using DCRC/Fetrow economics, the article shows how a 3.5‑point DPR gap is worth roughly $157–$367 — up to $360 — per daughter over three lactations, often beating a 150‑point NM$ advantage in a heat‑stress barn. Lameness math from Robcis et al. 2023 adds another hit: about $336.91 per case plus $13.26 for every lame week, concentrated in tall, angular, low‑BCS sire families. The herd’s answer was to ban negative‑DPR bulls from hot pens, tone down knife‑edge type, track “resilience” in milk curves after heat events, and run a small ProCROSS pilot on the bottom 10–20% of cow families. The piece gives producers hard thresholds — a >15‑point summer Preg150 gap, repeat‑offender sires on lameness and abort lists, and cows that don’t recover milk within two weeks of heat — as practical red flags that their own bull list is built for January, not July.

On a big Arizona Holstein freestall, the wake‑up call didn’t come from panting cows or a dead fan. It came from a DC305 screen on a hot August morning, when the herd manager pulled a Pregnant‑by‑150‑DIM report split by calving month and stared at a 15‑point gap between winter‑fresh cows cruising toward 80% pregnant and summer‑fresh cows stuck in the mid‑60s on the same synchronization program.

Fans were humming. Soakers were cycling. Cows were eating. Rectal temps looked reasonable. The only thing that didn’t make sense was why the daughters of certain high‑NM$ bulls collapsed every July while others quietly held up.

That’s when the farm stopped asking, “Do we need more fans?” and started asking a harder question: “Are our +950 NM$ bulls even bred for this barn?”

Days in Milk	Winter-Fresh Cows (%)	Summer-Fresh Cows (%)
0	0	0
50	28	18
100	58	42
150	79	64

Why Heat Stress Exposes the Wrong Kind of “Good”

On a lot of Southwest freestalls, sire lists get built in January. The weather’s mild, reproduction looks fine, and national indexes like NM$ feel like safe ground because they average performance across cool freestalls, tiestalls, grazing outfits, and hot drylots. A +950 NM$ bull looks hard to argue with on paper.

Heat stress doesn’t care what the proof sheet says.

Work on U.S. dairy herds shows high‑producing Holsteins start feeling real heat stress at a temperature‑humidity index (THI) in the high‑60s to low‑70s, with milk yield and conception both dropping as THI climbs. In barns that live above that line for weeks, the patterns show up fast when herds split data by calving month: winter‑fresh cows routinely reach 75–85% pregnant by 150 DIM, while summer‑fresh cows in those same barns and programs can slide into the mid‑60s on some farms. Abort rates on pregnancies conceived during the hottest windows often climb noticeably above winter levels and, in some herds, have approached nearly twice the normal baseline. Lameness prevalence tends to bump higher in late summer and fall as cows pay for July and August on their feet.

On herds that have done this kind of DC305 or PCDART split, consultants say the worst heat‑season pregnancies and the ugliest fall lameness often cluster around the same few sire families.

On this Arizona freestall, that cluster shared a familiar profile: very high NM$, big milk, sharp dairy form, negative body condition genetics, and tall frames. Exactly the kind of bulls that looked like automatic “yes” choices when the bull list was built in January.

The Cooling System Was Fine. The Oocytes Weren’t.

On that August DC305 check, the herd’s cooling strategy actually looked solid. Cows weren’t piled in front of fans, rectal temperatures mostly stayed out of the danger zone, and milk only dipped hard on the worst days before bouncing back.

Reproduction told a very different story.

Heat stress doesn’t just wreck the day you see cows breathing hard at the bunk. It can damage oocytes during follicle development for weeks before ovulation. In experimental and field work with heat‑stressed cows, researchers have documented large drops in fertilization and early embryo survival — in some settings, rates have fallen from the 70–80% range into the 30–40% range under heat stress.

Early gestation under high THI is also linked to higher embryonic loss, even when cows don’t look obviously distressed. Fans and sprinklers can keep today’s rectal temperatures manageable, but they can’t retroactively fix oocytes that were stressed two weeks ago or embryos that hit a bad stretch of THI in the first month of pregnancy.

Genetics fills that gap. It decides how hard a cow runs metabolically, how much condition she keeps when heat shrinks appetite, and how her reproductive system comes out the other side of three bad weeks. Stack extreme production, negative body condition, and weak fertility on a tall, heavy frame, and small cracks in July turn into big holes by August.

That’s why this herd eventually stopped chasing more hardware and started tearing apart the bull list.

Three Numbers That Should Make You Rethink Your Semen Tank

Once the consultants and the farm sat down with the data, they didn’t start with genomics. They started with three simple, ugly numbers hiding in plain sight.

1. Winter vs Summer Pregnant‑by‑150 DIM

This Arizona herd was comfortably in the 75–85% Preg150 band for winter‑fresh cows. Split the DC305 report by calving month, though, and summer‑fresh cows sat in the mid‑60s — more than 15 points behind.

The facilities hadn’t changed. Same voluntary wait period. Same synchronization protocols. Different genetics trying to get pregnant in the heat.

When they sorted those summer cows by sire, a handful of high‑NM$ family names kept surfacing near the bottom of the Preg150 rankings.

2. The September Lameness Bump

Lameness isn’t just a welfare issue — it’s a clean‑cut economic drag. A Penn State Extension summary of an April 2023 Journal of Dairy Science paper by Robcis and colleagues put the average cost of a lameness case at about $336.91 per cow, once you include lost milk, repro penalties, treatment, and culling risk. For every week a cow stays lame, the model tagged roughly $13.26 in additional lost profit.

When this herd charted lameness by month, the line climbed in late summer and stayed high into fall. Sorting lame cows by sire showed the same families that were failing summer fertility were over‑represented in the hoof‑trimming list.

You don’t need a PhD to connect those dots on concrete in the heat.

3. Abort Rate on Summer Pregnancies

Nobody wants to do pregnancy checks twice. But when the farm looked at abort rates on confirmed pregnancies conceived during the hottest months, the story was just as ugly.

Many herds use a 5–8% abort rate on confirmed pregnancies as a rough field target. On this freestall, winter conceptions sat comfortably in that range. Pregnancies conceived in the hottest windows — especially out of certain sire lines — climbed well above that level and, in their worst years, approached nearly twice the winter baseline.

The same sire stack that shoved cows deeper into negative energy balance and made claws pay for summer was quietly increasing pregnancy loss.

When those three numbers line up — a summer Preg150 gap of 15+ points, a late‑summer lameness bump, and summer abort rates climbing toward twice winter — you’re not just fighting heat. You’re fighting the way your cows are built.

When Heat Stress Turns Holstein Proofs into Liabilities

Once those three numbers were on the table, the next step was to look at the proof sheets behind the problem cows.

The worst offenders shared a familiar set of traits:

High dairy form and angularity.
Genetically low body condition score.
Tall stature and more body weight.

Work using Holstein type and body condition score data has shown a strong negative relationship between dairy form and BCS — sharper cows tend to carry less condition at a given production level. That looks great in a winter show photo. It looks expensive when July shrinks intakes, and you need reserves to protect ovaries and claws.

Heat‑tolerance studies on Holsteins in hot environments report that cows with more extreme angularity and higher production are genetically more sensitive to heat stress — they lose more milk and fertility as THI climbs, with unfavorable genetic correlations between heat‑tolerance indicators and “sharp” type and size. Stack that on top of extra body weight, and you’ve bred a cow that generates more metabolic heat, has less condition to buffer a slump, and pushes harder early in lactation with less room for error.

The bulls that looked perfect in a January bull list turned out to be the wrong fit for an Arizona Holstein freestall in August.

Trait	“Paper King” Profile	“Summer Survivor” Profile
NM$	+950	+800
Milk PTA	Very high (~+2,200 lb)	Moderate (~+1,800 lb)
DPR	–1.0 to –2.0	+2.0 to +3.0
Body Condition Score (BCS)	Negative (–0.5 to –1.0)	Neutral to positive (0.0 to +0.3)
Dairy Form / Angularity	Extreme / Very sharp	Moderate
Stature	Tall (~+2.5 to +3.0)	Moderate (~+1.0 to +1.5)
Hoof Health Composite	Below average	Above average
Summer Preg-by-150 (field)	Bottom quartile (58–65%)	Top half (72–80%)
Sept/Oct Lameness Frequency	Over-represented	Under-represented or average

The bulls that quietly held conception rates and stayed out of the hoof‑trimming list looked boring on paper: moderate angularity, neutral or positive body condition score, moderate stature, solid positive DPR and CCR, good hoof‑health composites, and respectable — but not extreme — milk PTAs.

If you want the back story on how Holstein type got so sharp, Four Bulls That Changed the Holstein Breed: Genius, Gambles, and the Price We’re Still Paying is the natural next stop.

How Much Does a Negative DPR Bull Really Cost in the Heat?

This is where the math changed the herd’s thinking.

They had bulls in the tank that looked something like this:

Bull A (representative profile): +950 NM$, ‑1.0 DPR.
Bull B (representative profile): +800 NM$, +2.5 DPR.

On paper, Bull A feels like the “better” bull. But according to Dairy Cattle Reproduction Council (DCRC) work by Dr. John Fetrow, a one‑percentage‑point improvement in pregnancy rate is worth roughly $15–$35 per cow per year, depending on milk price and the herd’s starting point.

Over a 3.5‑point DPR gap, even at the low end:

3.5 points × $15–$35 ≈ $52–$122 per cow per year in reproduction value.
Over three lactations ≈ $157–$367 per daughter in lifetime benefit.

That $157–$367 per daughter is the range this herd kept coming back to. That’s the “$360 DPR mistake” — using the high end of the DCRC range, a 3.5‑point DPR gap can quietly add up to roughly $360 in reproduction value per daughter over three lactations.

At $20/cwt, an extra 300–400 lb of milk PTA is roughly $60–$80 gross per lactation. That matters. But when you add summer days open, abortions, and lameness‑driven culls to the ledger, the reproductive and longevity advantage of a +2.5 DPR bull can match or outweigh the NM$ gap over that cow’s life in a hot barn.

Here’s how that comparison sketches out:

Trait	Bull A — “Paper King”	Bull B — “Summer Survivor”	Difference	Who Wins in Heat?
NM$	+950	+800	–150	Bull A
DPR	–1.0	+2.5	+3.5	Bull B
Annual Repro Value (DCRC)	Baseline	+$52–$122/cow/year	+$52–$122	Bull B
3-Lactation Repro Value	—	+$157–$367/daughter	+$157–$367	Bull B
Milk PTA Advantage (Bull A)	~+350 lb (~$70/lact)	—	~$210 over 3 lact.	Bull A
Summer Abort & Days Open Cost	Higher (daughters fail in heat)	Lower (daughters hold fertility)	Unquantified penalty	Bull B
Net Value Over Life in Heat	NM$ advantage eroded by repro losses	Repro value ≥ $360 outweighs NM$ gap	—	Bull B

Bull A still looks better on a generic bull list. Bull B looks a lot better when you’re sweating through a July breeding round.

For a wider look at how economics and resilience are reshaping bull lists, From $1.5 Million to $150,000: The Dairy Genetics Shakeout and Your Next Move digs into exactly that.

How This Herd Changed Its Bull List

Once the heat‑season Preg150 gap and the DPR math were on the table, the Arizona freestall made three changes that stuck.

Drew a Hard Line at 0.0 DPR

The first decision was simple: no more negative DPR bulls for cows that have to milk through the heat. Bulls under 0.0 DPR moved to “heifer only” or “do not reorder” for the main herd.

They didn’t chase only extreme fertility bulls. They targeted roughly +2.0 to +3.0 DPR as routine use for mature cows in heat‑stress pens — consistent with DCRC economics showing any gain in pregnancy rate has real dollar value.

That one move cut a lot of angular, low‑BCS, high‑NM$ bulls out of the mature‑cow lineup overnight.

Killed the Knife‑Edge Type in Hot Pens

The second decision came from that ugly September lameness curve.

When they sorted lame fall cows by sire and then looked at proofs, the same patterns kept appearing: high dairy form, negative body condition, taller frames. Those bulls might still earn a slot in specific matings for show‑oriented cow families. But they no longer belonged behind the bulk of cows that had to breed back in August on concrete.

The farm and its genetic adviser agreed to:

Avoid extreme dairy form and strongly negative BCS genetics for cows in the hottest pens.
Prefer moderate stature and weight for those groups.
Put real weight on hoof‑health composites when choosing bulls for young cows already struggling in heat.

That didn’t mean abandoning Holstein type. It meant using it where it pays and pulling it from where it punishes.

Started Watching Milk Curves for “Resilience”

The last change was subtler. The herd had already been logging daily milk through parlour software. After reading emerging work on resilience and day‑to‑day milk variation, they started flagging cows whose production dropped hard during a heat event and didn’t get back near their previous level within two weeks.

They then looked at which sires showed up most often behind those “slow recovery” cows.

Some bulls had daughters whose curves dipped shallowly during hot weeks and bounced back fast. Others fell into a deep hole and stayed there. The farm started treating that “resilience signature” as another signal to move bulls up or down the list — especially for pens that see the worst THI.

It wasn’t a formal index. But it gave them a way to see whether a new round of bulls was producing daughters that bend in heat instead of breaking.

Where Crossbreeding Fit — and Where It Didn’t

Full‑herd crossbreeding wasn’t on the table for this freestall. They like Holsteins, and their infrastructure is built for Holsteins. But they were honest about the bottom slice of the herd — roughly the bottom 10–20% of cow families that just never seemed to survive summer.

That’s where crossbreeding crept in as a scalpel, not a religion.

A decade‑long, seven‑herd University of Minnesota ProCROSS study led by Brad Heins, Les Hansen, and colleagues found that two‑breed ProCROSS cows (Viking Red × Holstein, Montbéliarde × Holstein) posted about 13% higher daily profit, and three‑breed cows about 9% higher daily profit, than Holstein herdmates in the same systems. Those crossbreds also stayed in the herd roughly 147–153 more days than Holsteins, depending on the specific analysis.

Metric	Holstein Controls	2-Breed ProCROSS (VR × HO or MB × HO)	3-Breed ProCROSS (VR × MB × HO)
Daily Profit per Cow	Baseline	+13% higher	+9% higher
Extra Days in Herd	Baseline	+153 days	+147 days
Body Condition	Lower	Stronger, better reserves	Stronger, better reserves
Pregnancy Rate	Lower	Higher in heat stress	Higher in heat stress
Sick Days / Hospital Pen	Higher	Fewer	Fewer
Study Duration	10 years, 7 herds (UMN Heins/Hansen)	10 years, 7 herds	10 years, 7 herds

Mike Osmundson of Creative Genetics in California has seen similar patterns on commercial dairies using a three‑breed rotation for two decades. In Progressive Dairy coverage, he described crossbred cows in those herds as “stronger cows with better body condition, higher pregnancy rates and fewer sick days spent in the hospital.”

On this Arizona freestall, the family didn’t flip the whole herd. But they started using a ProCROSS‑style rotation on a small slice — roughly the bottom 10–20% of cow families that kept showing up as repeat problems in summer:

Chronic summer repeat breeders.
Cow families with bad summer fertility and hoof histories.
Heifers out of sires that showed up too often on their “summer problem” list.

Those crossbred cows stopped being a constant July headache. That alone justified keeping a small crossbred pilot going on the worst tier instead of pouring more high‑NM$ Holstein semen into the same trouble families.

For a broader view on how a decade of crossbreeding research lines up with inbreeding and profit, The $200‑Per‑Cow Blindspot: What Rising Inbreeding Is Costing You and What a Decade of Crossbreeding Research Is Really Saying ties those threads together.

Is Your Sire List Built for January or July?

After three summers of watching the numbers, this Arizona herd stopped thinking about “good bulls” and started thinking about “right bulls for this climate and this concrete.”

That’s the real question for any Holstein freestall living above a THI of 68 for weeks at a time. You might have as many or more fans and soakers as this herd. The question is whether your sires are built for those nights when the barn never really cools down.

You don’t need genomic heat‑tolerance proofs to see the gap. It’s already sitting in your Preg150, abortion, lameness, and daily milk data.

What This Means for Your Operation

In the next 30 days, you can steal a lot of this herd’s learning without copying their exact program:

Pull your own Pregnant‑by‑150 DIM by calving month. If your winter group is in the 75–85% range and your summer‑fresh cows are more than 15 points behind, you’re likely fighting a genetics‑plus‑heat problem, not just a cooling problem.
Sort summer Preg150 and abort rates by sire. Look for bull families that consistently post lower Preg150 and higher abort rates on summer conceptions; those sires should be the first to move down your list for cows that milk in heat.
Draw a hard line at 0.0 DPR for hot‑season pens. Bulls under that mark can move to limited heifer use or out of rotation entirely for mature cows on concrete in heat. Bulls in the +2.0 to +3.0 DPR range with decent NM$ give you a better balance in those pens.
Map your September and October lameness by sire. If the same angular, low‑BCS, tall‑frame families keep showing up, they’re costing you twice — in claws and in pregnancies — every time the barn heats up.
Flag cows that took more than two weeks to recover milk after last summer’s worst heat event. Sort by sire. Bulls whose daughters fall into deep production holes and stay there should move down the list for hot pens; bulls whose daughters bounce back quickly deserve more work.
Consider a small crossbreeding pilot for your bottom 10–20%. If you’ve got chronic summer repeat breeders and cow families that live in the hospital pen, a limited ProCROSS‑style trial on that tier may clean up headaches without changing your whole herd identity.

Looking further out:

By 90 days — before your next summer breeding peak — compare this summer’s Preg150 by sire to last summer’s. Did the bull‑list changes move the needle? If not, widen the DPR floor or swap more moderate‑type sires into hot‑pen rotations.
In 365 days, run a full summer‑to‑summer comparison of Preg150 and lameness by sire. The target: close at least half of your winter‑summer Preg150 gap and flatten the September lameness curve. If you can’t, the site list still isn’t built for your climate.

The point isn’t to copy somebody else’s sire list. It’s to make sure your list is built for your actual climate and flooring — not for a barn that only exists in a December bull catalogue.

Key Takeaways

If your summer Pregnant‑by‑150‑DIM sits more than 15 points lower than winter in a well‑cooled Holstein freestall, you’re probably not just fighting heat — you’re fighting the way your cows are put together.
A 3.5‑point DPR advantage is worth roughly $157–$367 per daughter over three lactations, based on DCRC/Fetrow economics of $15–$35 per point of pregnancy rate per cow per year. That can easily match or outrun a 150‑point NM$ gap once heat‑driven days open, abortions, and culls hit the ledger.
Bulls with extreme dairy form, negative body condition score, and tall frames look great in a January photo. In July, they often show up at the bottom of your Preg150 list and at the top of your hoof‑trim list — at roughly $336.91 per lameness case plus $13.26 for every week a cow stays lame, based on Robcis et al. 2023 and Penn State’s extension summary.
Crossbreeding isn’t all‑or‑nothing. Used with intention on the worst 10–20% of cow families, a ProCROSS‑style rotation — which delivered 9–13% higher daily profit and around 147–153 extra days in the herd than Holsteins in the University of Minnesota trial — can turn chronic summer headaches into boring, profitable cows without changing the rest of your program.

The Bottom Line

This Arizona freestall didn’t fix its summer fertility gap by installing one more fan. It fixed it by admitting that some of the fanciest bulls in the tank were the wrong bulls for a barn that lives in the heat.

If your cooling system already belongs in 2026 but your summer Preg150 still looks like 2002, the most profitable move you’ll make this year might not be steel or concrete. It might be pulling a few “paper kings” from the lineup and giving more work to the bulls that actually survive July in your postcode.

So when you pull your own summer Preg150 and lameness by sire, which bulls are you really breeding for — January or July?

Complete references and supporting documentation are available upon request by contacting the editorial team at editor@thebullvine.com.

Learn More

Why Your Magnesium Strategy Could Save $1,200 Per Cow This Summer –How strategic mineral shifts can claw back $120,000 in annual reproductive losses. This guide arms you with 2025 research on metabolic buffering to protect oocytes before the first heat wave hits your pens.
$90K Less Margin, 214K More Cows: Beef‑on‑Dairy, Calf Checks and Your 2026 Survival Playbook – The structural “biological trap” of current culling math. He breaks down how to position your herd’s genetic core to survive a $100,000 revenue gap while capitalizing on record-breaking beef-on-dairy premiums through 2027.
Revolutionizing Dairy Farming: How AI, Robotics, and Blockchain Are Shaping the Future of Agriculture in 2025 –A glimpse into AI-optimized breeding programs that halve sperm costs while predicting disease with 99.8% precision. Learn how real-time biometric sensors can flag a $1,300 lameness case 72 hours before your hoof trimmer even arrives.

The Sunday Read Dairy Professionals Don’t Skip.

Categories : Genetics

Tags : Arizona dairy farming, dairy cow cooling, Daughter Pregnancy Rate, genetic resilience, heat stress fertility, Holstein sire selection

Fertility Bulls Failing? Your PTAs Are 30% Inflated – Here’s the Fix

Friday, November 7th, 2025

31% of dairy services now use beef semen. Fertility evaluations? Still pretending it’s 2005. No wonder your PTAs don’t work.

Executive Summary: If you’ve spent years selecting elite fertility bulls with zero improvement, you’re not alone—and you’re not failing. The genetic evaluation system has been broken for 20 years, inflating fertility PTAs by an estimated 25-30% based on the timing bias and management misalignment Dr. McWhorter described and costing the average 500-cow dairy $25,000 annually. Modern management broke the system: it assumes you breed at 50 days when the industry average is 67.5, can’t account for 31% of services using beef semen, and actively punishes progressive practices like extended VWP as genetic deficiencies. CDCB admits the problems and promises fixes in 2026, but smart producers aren’t waiting—they’re already discounting elite PTAs by 25-30%, trusting proven bulls with 750+ daughters, and spreading services across 8-12 sires. Your cows aren’t broken, your management isn’t failing—the measurement system just hasn’t caught up to how modern dairies actually operate.

You know, I’ve been having the same conversation at every producer meeting lately—from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania, even down in Georgia where—let’s be honest, the heat stress alone should explain everything. Folks who’ve spent five to ten years selecting top-tier fertility bulls are seeing pregnancy rates that just… aren’t budging.

Here’s what’s interesting: the disconnect between what the PTAs promise and what shows up in the tank has left many questioning their management. But after sitting through Dr. Taylor McWhorter’s presentation at World Dairy Expo this year—and digging into the research behind it—I’m convinced we’ve been measuring the wrong thing, in the wrong environment, for about two decades now.

What Dr. McWhorter laid out at Madison this October were nine major updates to fertility evaluations scheduled for 2026. And while CDCB is presenting these as routine improvements, if you read between the lines… well, they’re quietly acknowledging that our fertility evaluations have been systematically miscalculating genetic merit for herds using modern management practices.

The economic modeling CDCB has done suggests we’re looking at tens of millions in foregone genetic progress over the past decade. That’s real money left on the table.

Click the link to view the presentation. Modern Herds, Modern Hurdles: Aligning Fertility Evaluations Taylor McWhorter, Ph.D., CDCB Geneticist Slides

The Hidden Cost of Assumptions That No Longer Match Reality

So here’s how something as basic as your voluntary waiting period created this mess.

For over 20 years, the genetic evaluation system has assumed that everybody’s breeding cows at 50 days after calving. Made perfect sense back when that’s what we all did, right? I remember my dad’s operation in the ’90s—50 days was gospel.

But here’s the thing: CDCB’s own data shows that by 2020, the actual industry average VWP had crept up to 67.5 days. And I know operations pushing 80-85 days, especially those high-producing herds out West trying to let cows get their metabolic act together before breeding. Even smaller operations I work with in the Northeast are extending to 70 days based on their vets’ recommendations.

As Dr. McWhorter explained it—and this really hit home for me—the evaluation methodology was assuming all cows had the opportunity to become pregnant starting at 50 days in milk. But when you’re actually waiting 70 days, there’s this phantom 20-day window where cows physically can’t be pregnant, yet the evaluation expects them to be.

What this means for your breeding decisions is pretty straightforward, and honestly, kind of frustrating. Bulls whose daughters were in extended-VWP herds looked artificially poor for fertility. Not because the daughters weren’t getting pregnant—they just couldn’t even be bred during the timeframe the evaluation was looking for.

The economic modeling suggests this mismatch alone costs an estimated $50 per cow annually based on CDCB economic modeling of missed genetic progress in distorted selection decisions and missed genetic progress. You do the math on your herd… for a 500-cow operation, that’s $25,000 every single year. It adds up fast.

Time Period	Industry Average VWP (Days)	Evaluation System Assumption	Timing Gap (Days)	Annual Cost Per Cow
1990s-2005	50	50	0	$0
2010	52	50	2	$5
2015	58	50	8	$15
2020	67.5	50	17.5	$50
2024 (Progressive Herds)	75-85	50	25-35	$75-100

When Beef-on-Dairy Changed Everything We Thought We Knew

But the VWP issue? That was just the warm-up act.

You probably know this already, but the beef-on-dairy explosion happened faster than anyone expected. The National Association of Animal Breeders’ data shows beef semen sales to dairy farms hit 7.9 million units in 2023—that’s 31% of all semen sold to dairies. Five years ago? That number was basically nothing.

Holstein semen dropped from complete market dominance to just 43% of cow services by 2024, with Angus alone accounting for nearly 29% according to CDCB’s April evaluation summary. I mean, that’s a fundamental shift in what we’re doing reproductively.

*The beef-on-dairy explosion happened faster than anyone predicted—Holstein semen dropped from 95% market dominance to just 43% in five years, while Angus alone captured 29% of dairy services by 2024*

And it’s not just a market trend—it’s changed what “fertility” even means in a modern breeding program.

The research McWhorter presented from her University of Georgia work shows Angus semen produces slightly different conception rates than Holstein semen—we’re talking 33.8% versus 34.3% in lactating cows. But here’s what really matters: beef semen gets used strategically on problem breeders, averaging a service number of 3.04, compared to Holstein’s 2.13.

Conception rates look nearly identical—Angus at 33.8%, Holstein at 34.3%. But the story’s in the service numbers. Beef semen goes to problem breeders averaging 3.04 services, nearly 50% higher than Holstein’s 2.13. When 30% of your services use beef strategically on cows that already failed dairy breeding, the evaluation system can’t tell the difference. It attributes all that reproductive struggle to the dairy bull’s genetics. Bulls in heavy beef-on-dairy herds look artificially poor—even when their actual dairy daughters are doing just fine.

What I’ve found is that when 40-50% of services in a herd use beef semen—and those services concentrate on cows that already struggled with dairy breeding—the evaluation system can’t tell the difference. It attributes all of that to the dairy bull’s genetics.

So bulls in herds doing extensive beef-on-dairy look artificially poor for fertility, even when their actual dairy-breeding daughters are doing just fine.

The Five Games: When One Size Doesn’t Fit Anyone

Here’s what’s become crystal clear from analyzing all that data in the National Cooperator Database—you know, that massive collection of over 100 million lactation records we all contribute to…

“Fertility” has basically fragmented into at least five distinct biological processes. And each one selects for different genetic capacities.

Modern dairies aren’t playing one fertility game—they’re juggling five distinct breeding strategies simultaneously. With genetic correlations of only 0.65-0.75 between these systems, a bull ranking top 10% for elite replacements might rank bottom 30% for problem breeders. The evaluation system averages them all together and calls it “fertility merit.” No wonder your PTAs don’t work.

Think about it this way:

The elite replacement game. These are your nucleus herds using sexed Holstein semen on high-merit heifers and first-lactation cows at optimal timing. They’re pushing for maximum conception rates to produce superior replacements. Based on DHI participation patterns, about 20% of herds operate primarily this way.

You know the type—those big registered operations in Wisconsin and New York.

Commercial dairy breeding. Your typical commercial operation using conventional semen on mid-tier cows after standard VWP. This probably represents 35% or so of operations, based on what CDCB sees in their herd management surveys. Most of the 200-500 cow herds across the Midwest fall here.

Problem breeder salvage. We’ve all been there—service number four or five, just trying to get that cow pregnant before you have to cull her.

The Wisconsin research suggests this affects about 30% of the breeding-eligible population at any given time.

Beef-on-dairy terminal breeding. Strategic use of beef genetics on lower-genetic-merit cows to maximize calf value. NAAB data shows this grew from basically zero to representing 15-20% of breeding decisions in just five years. And it’s still growing.

The ET programs. Elite genetics multiplied through embryo transfer, bypassing natural breeding entirely. Small percentage overall, but concentrated in high-value genetics.

Now, current evaluations average performance across all five of these “games” into a single Daughter Pregnancy Rate or Cow Conception Rate score. But—and this is where it gets really interesting—the genetic correlations between these management systems have dropped to 0.65-0.75, based on recent genotype-by-environment research.

What’s that mean in plain English? A bull ranking in the top 10% for elite replacement production might rank in the bottom 30% for problem breeder management. Same genetics, completely different outcomes depending on which game you’re playing.

What Progressive Producers Are Learning the Hard Way

I was talking with a producer managing about 1,800 cows in Wisconsin—he’d been selecting exclusively on top-tier genomic bulls for fertility since 2019. His pregnancy rate? Still stuck around 28%.

He told me, “I kept thinking we were screwing something up with our management. We extended VWP to 72 days based on the University of Wisconsin recommendations for better first-service conception. We adopted beef-on-dairy for inventory control—now using about 35% beef semen. Everything the consultants said should help.”

What he didn’t realize—and what nobody was really talking about clearly—was that his progressive management practices were systematically penalized by the evaluation methodology.

Here’s the kicker that CDCB research has shown: high-fertility daughters enter genetic databases 6-12 months before low-fertility daughters. It’s this timing bias thing. Young bulls get their first evaluations based predominantly on their best-performing daughters. The PTAs look fantastic initially, then drift downward as more complete data rolls in.

Young bulls enter the market with fertility PTAs inflated by 25-30% because high-fertility daughters report 6-12 months earlier than struggling daughters. It’s like judging a pitcher’s ERA by only counting scoreless innings—the evaluation looks fantastic until complete data rolls in. By month 36, that elite +3.0 PTA has eroded to +2.0. Your breeding decisions weren’t wrong. You were sold incomplete scorecards.

Kind of like judging a pitcher’s ERA after only counting the scoreless innings, you know?

And it’s not just one or two operations seeing this. I’ve heard similar stories from California to Idaho—producers who thought they were doing something wrong when, in reality, the evaluation system wasn’t capturing what they were doing right.

One producer near Boise who made the shift told me his pregnancy rates reportedly improved notably after he started ignoring genomic fertility PTAs and selecting more on within-herd performance. Sometimes going backwards is actually going forwards.

Practical Steps for Managing Through the Uncertainty

What I’ve noticed is that savvy producers aren’t waiting for the 2026 updates. They’re already adjusting their selection strategies based on what they’re seeing in their own barns.

After talking with consultants and progressive producers across the country, several strategies keep coming up.

First, you’ve got to discount those sky-high PTAs. Many consultants I work with are recommending haircuts of 25-30%on top-ranked fertility PTAs. A large-herd manager I know in Idaho put it pretty bluntly: “A bull showing +3.0 DPR? We treat him like he’s maybe a +2.0, +2.2 at best for our operation.” It’s not perfect, but it’s more realistic.

Trust proven bulls for fertility. Dr. Kent Weigel at Wisconsin-Madison has published extensively on this—progeny-proven bulls with 750+ daughters have already been through the timing bias wringer. While their genetics may be a generation older, their fertility predictions have proven more reliable in field conditions.

Match your bulls to your management. If you’re running an extended VWP with substantial beef-on-dairy, bulls evaluated in traditional 50-day VWP environments may underperform pretty dramatically. With those genetic correlations of 0.65-0.75 between evaluation and deployment environments, you’re looking at only 65-75% of predicted gains actually showing up.

And don’t ignore your own data. For herds that are substantially different from national averages, selecting replacement heifers based on actual performance in your environment may outperform genomic predictions. A heifer that conceives on first service in your system? She’s carrying genetics that work for you, regardless of what her genomic PTA says.

I know one producer in Pennsylvania who’s been tracking this meticulously—he’s seen better results selecting on within-herd performance than chasing high genomic PTAs for fertility. Sometimes the old ways still work.

They’re also diversifying bull selection. Rather than putting all their eggs in 3-5 elite bull baskets, they’re spreading services across 8-12 sires. When top-ranked bulls prove overestimated—which history suggests some will—the damage is contained.

Many are building custom indices, creating herd-specific selection criteria that weight production traits (where evaluations remain pretty accurate) more heavily than fertility traits (where accuracy has… degraded).

Producer networks are sharing real outcome data. “This bull delivered, that one didn’t”—the kind of real-world validation that matters more than PTAs sometimes.

Keep in mind, with generation intervals what they are, you’re looking at 2-3 years before these breeding strategy adjustments really show up in your pregnancy rates. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Selection Strategy	Old Approach (Pre-2024)	New Reality (2024+)	Impact
Trust Top Genomic PTAs	Use +3.0 DPR at face value	Treat +3.0 as +2.0-2.2	25-30% inflation risk
Apply 25-30% Discount	Not applied	Applied to all elite PTAs	More realistic expectations
Young Bulls (<750 daughters)	Primary selection pool	High risk for inflation	Timing bias exposure
Proven Bulls (750+ daughters)	Considered “”outdated genetics””	More reliable predictions	Already corrected
Bull Diversification	3-5 elite bulls	8-12 bulls minimum	Risk mitigation
Selection Weight on Fertility	35-40% of TPI weight	15-20% of custom index	Reduce unreliable traits
Custom Index Approach	Standard TPI/NM$	Production-heavy weighting	Weight what works

Industry Trends Reshaping How We Think About Fertility

The changes coming in 2026 aren’t happening in a vacuum. They’re responses to massive shifts that caught the evaluation system flat-footed:

You’ve got management fragmentation—DHI data shows VWP now ranges from 50 to 85+ days across herds, compared to that narrow 45-55 day range we had two decades ago.

The beef integration explosion is real. NAAB reports show that 7.9 million units of beef semen were produced in 2023, up from 7.6 million the previous year. That’s not a trend anymore—it’s the new normal.

Then there’s the problem of missing data. CDCB estimates that about 6.6% of breedings have unknown or unrecorded service sires. Hard to evaluate what you can’t even identify, right?

Technology adoption is huge, too. The 2024 National Dairy FARM Program data suggests that around 68% of herds with 500 or more cows now use some form of automated heat detection. That’s creating management variation that the evaluations just can’t capture yet.

And here’s what really accelerates everything: generation intervals have collapsed from about 7 years pre-genomics to 2.5 years now, according to Holstein Association USA genetic trend reports. So evaluation errors multiply through breeding pyramids faster than… well, faster than the system can correct them.

What’s Actually Changing in 2026 (If Everything Goes Through)

Dr. McWhorter outlined nine specific updates at World Dairy Expo, pending Interbull validation this January. Let me break down what actually matters for us:

They’re finally going to adjust for variable VWP, accounting for herd-specific waiting periods from 50 to 85 days. About time, right?

Service sire breed effects will be adjusted for differences in conception rates between dairy and beef semen. That should help with the beef-on-dairy distortion.

There’s a 36-month age restriction coming to prevent that timing bias from early-reporting daughters I mentioned.

They’re introducing First Service to Conception as a new trait that measures only the post-breeding interval. That’s actually pretty clever—sidesteps a lot of the VWP confusion.

The variance components are being updated using the most recent 10 years of data rather than… well, let’s just say, much older averages.

Plus improvements to genomic validation, methods for handling those unknown service sires, some tweaks to the Early First Calving trait, and better modeling across multiple lactations.

If these pass Interbull validation in January, we’ll see implementation in April 2026 evaluations at the earliest. Miss that window? Add another 6-12 months minimum. So don’t hold your breath.

The Bigger Picture: Why Change Takes Forever

You might wonder why it takes 20 years to fix problems everyone can see. I’ve been asking the same question for… well, a long time.

The answer lies in how genetic evaluation governance works. CDCB operates through consensus among groups with very different priorities. Breed associations worry about the continuity of genetic trends. AI studs are protecting bull valuations. Data providers are managing costs. Getting them all to agree? It’s challenging, to put it mildly.

As Dr. Paul VanRaden explained at his retirement seminar last year, the system is designed for stability and credibility, not rapid adaptation. That served us well when management practices changed slowly. But when beef-on-dairy transforms the industry in 5 years, our 15-20 year update cycle just can’t keep pace.

What’s fascinating—and maybe a bit frustrating—is that this governance structure is working exactly as designed. It just wasn’t designed for the pace of modern dairy innovation.

Looking Ahead: What This Means for Different Operations

The impact varies quite a bit depending on your operation. And our friends north of the border in Canada are dealing with similar challenges through their own evaluation system—affecting international semen trade in ways we’re just starting to understand.

Smaller herds—say, under 200 cows—are often less affected because many still operate closer to traditional management. But those adopting beef-on-dairy to capture calf premiums? They face the same evaluation distortions as anyone.

Large Western dairies have been hit hardest. They led beef-on-dairy adoption and VWP extension. Their progressive management gets penalized most severely by these outdated evaluation assumptions.

In the Southeast, heat stress complicates everything, making it harder to separate management effects from genetic merit. The evaluation updates may actually help these herds most by reducing some of those confounding factors.

And grazing operations? That’s a different ballgame entirely. Seasonal breeding and pasture-based systems create genotype-by-environment interactions that the evaluation system barely acknowledges. Many have already moved to within-herd selection just out of necessity.

For seasonal calving systems in places like New Zealand or Ireland? They’re playing an entirely different game that the evaluation system barely recognizes.

Key Takeaways for Your Breeding Program

After all this, several lessons really stand out:

Your management wasn’t failing—the measurement was. If fertility hasn’t improved despite selecting high-PTA bulls for years, evaluation bias likely explains most of that gap. So you can stop second-guessing yourself.
Progressive practices have been getting penalized. Extended VWP, beef-on-dairy integration, those individualized strategies that actually improve fertility? They can make genetic evaluations look worse. The system has been interpreting sophistication as genetic failure.
Production traits remain reliable, thankfully. Milk yield, components, and type evaluations maintain high accuracy with genetic correlations above 0.90 across different management systems, according to recent published research. So focus your genetic selection firepower there.
For fertility specifically? Proven beats potential right now. Young bulls’ fertility PTAs are most inflated. Bulls with large progeny groups provide predictions you can actually bank on.
And honestly? Local performance beats global predictions. For traits with high management sensitivity, your herd’s actual outcomes predict future performance better than national evaluations that measure different environments.
Change is coming—slowly. The 2026 updates will help, but won’t fully resolve the fragmentation across management systems or the historical bias already baked into current breeding pyramids.

Fertility by the Numbers: A Quick Review

Discount elite fertility PTAs by 25-30%
Prefer bulls with 750+ daughters for fertility
Spread services across 8-12 bulls
Genetic correlation between evaluation and your environment: 0.65-0.75
Cost of VWP mismatch: $50/cow annually

For now, those of us who understand these limitations can make smarter breeding decisions: discounting inflated predictions, preferring proven performance, and trusting our own herds’ outcomes when genomic promises don’t match what we see in the barn.

The evaluation system is adapting, just at a pace that ensures progressive producers will keep operating at least one management revolution ahead of the genetic measurements trying to catch up. But that’s not necessarily a crisis; it’s just the new reality we need to factor into our breeding decisions.

After all, we’ve been dealing with the difference between promise and performance since the first bull stud opened, and we’ll figure it out, like we always do.

Complete references and supporting documentation are available upon request by contacting the editorial team at editor@thebullvine.com.

Learn More:

Revolutionizing Dairy Reproduction: Why Your Outdated Protocols Are Costing You Thousands – This article provides the tactical “how-to” for overcoming stagnant fertility, detailing modern synchronization protocols like Double-Ovsynch and the proper implementation of Milk PAG testing to improve pregnancy rates right now.
The Holstein Genetics War: What Every Producer Needs to Know About the Battle for Our Breed’s Future – This strategic analysis reveals the economic and genetic consequences of industry trends. It provides an action plan for managing inbreeding, diversifying genetics, and maximizing the ROI of beef-on-dairy.
The UK’s Sexed Semen Playbook: How UK Dairies Hit 84% While You’re Still Stuck at 50/50 – This piece explores the successful adoption of new fertility technology. It demonstrates how UK producers overcame old fertility penalties to leverage modern sexed semen, providing a clear case study on boosting heifer inventory.

The Sunday Read Dairy Professionals Don’t Skip.

Categories : Genetic Evaluation System

Tags : Dairy fertility, dairy genetics, dairy profitability, Daughter Pregnancy Rate, Genomic Testing, herd management

Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) vs. Cow Conception Rate (CCR): Which will help you improve your herd’s fertility?

Sunday, January 19th, 2025

Learn the main differences between DPR and CCR in dairy cow fertility. How can these measures improve your herd’s breeding success and profits?

Think about dairy farming as solving a puzzle, where you want high milk production and healthy cow fertility. In the 1990s, breeders focused more on milk fat and protein, but this caused fertility problems. Cows had longer gaps between giving birth, which resulted in reduced productivity and profit. Today, we aim for balance, and tools like the Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) and Cow Conception Rate (CCR) help us understand fertility better. However, it can be challenging to determine the appropriate times to use these tools and to distinguish between their unique functions. This article allows farmers to balance producing milk and keeping cows healthy to earn more money.

The Evolution of Dairy Cow Fertility Metrics

In the 1990s, the dairy industry focused on increasing milk production by selecting cows with higher milk fat and protein. However, this emphasis led to problems as cows became less fertile and required more time to conceive. By the early 2000s, a shift in strategy was necessary to address these fertility issues.

Year	Average Milk Production (lbs/cow/year)	% Improvement in Milk Production	Average Fertility Rate (%)	% Change in Fertility Rate
1990	16,000		45
2000	18,500	15.63%	42	-6.67%
2010	20,000	8.11%	39	-7.14%
2020	23,000	15.00%	36	-7.69%

The introduction of the Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) in 2003 offered a solution. The DPR predicts how frequently cows become pregnant every 21 days, enabling farmers to select bulls that produce more fertile daughters without compromising milk yield. In 2010, the Cow Conception Rate (CCR) was introduced to measure how likely cows are to conceive after insemination, allowing for more informed breeding decisions and improved herd health.

Implementing DPR and CCR addressed the fertility challenges of the 1990s, resulting in healthier and more profitable dairy herds.

Delving Into Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR)

Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) is a key measure in the dairy industry used to evaluate the fertility potential of dairy cows. It shows the percentage of non-pregnant cows that get pregnant every 21 days. This helps predict how well future daughters of a bull will become pregnant compared to the average.

DPR calculation includes:

Tracking ‘days open’ is the time from calving until a cow gets pregnant again.
Considering the waiting period after calving, this data can be turned into a pregnancy rate with a formula.
Looking at up to five lactations across different cows for a broad view.
Suppose the Predicted Transmitting Ability (PTA) for the pregnancy rate increases by 1%. In that case, it lowers ‘days open’ by four, showing potential genetic progress.

DPR is important for farmers who want to make their herd better over time. It’s included in key selection tools like Net Merit (NM$), Total Performance Index (TPI), and Jersey Performance Index (JPI). A study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison showed that raising DPR by 1% could make an average of $35 more per cow yearly.

However, DPR has its downsides. Its heritability is only 4%, meaning environment and management have a significant impact. Because of this, genetic progress is slower. Also, calculating the data needed for DPR can be challenging for some farmers.

The Precision of Cow Conception Rate

The Cow Conception Rate (CCR) is essential in dairy farming because it shows how well a cow can get pregnant. Unlike broader fertility measures, it measures how many inseminations lead to a confirmed pregnancy. This specific focus makes CCR valuable for checking if artificial insemination is working on farms. Its calculation is simple: it looks at the percentage of cows pregnant after being inseminated. This precise measure helps farmers evaluate their breeding plans quickly. Good CCR means fewer inseminations, which cuts costs and helps maintain steady calving, leading to regular milk production. This improves a cow’s overall productivity over its lifespan, showcasing the economic significance of CCR.

Nevertheless, the Cow Conception Rate (CCR) presents challenges. It can be affected by factors like the cow’s health, semen quality, and the timing of insemination. These factors mean that CCR might not always be accurate, so farmers should consider them when interpreting CCR data. However, when used carefully, CCR helps improve dairy farming, supports genetic advancements, and promotes better breeding practices.

Cow Conception Rate (CCR) has even lower heritability, 1-2%. This means it’s even more affected by outside factors like breeding methods and cow health. Changing this trait with genetics alone is hard. Still, DPR and CCR are critical to improving the whole herd. Knowing how these traits are passed down helps farmers pick the right breeding goals and improve how they care for their cows to boost fertility.

Contrasting DPR and CCR

The Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) and Cow Conception Rate (CCR) are critical for understanding dairy cows’ fertility. They measure different things, which affects how they are used.

Aspect	Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR)	Cow Conception Rate (CCR)
Timeframe	Examine a cow for 21 days to determine whether she becomes pregnant.	Examines each breeding attempt to decide whether or not it was successful.
Scope	It covers overall herd fertility, including how well cows are detected in heat and inseminated.	It focuses on whether each insemination results in pregnancy.
Genetic Influence	More about long-term genetic improvement focusing on genetics.	About the immediate outcome and is more affected by factors like how well cows are managed.
Data Requirements	Requires extensive data, such as calving dates and the number of pregnant cows.	It is more straightforward, requiring only information on whether inseminations worked.
Practical Applications	It is excellent for long-term planning to improve cow genetics and reduce the time between calvings, helping keep cows healthy and farms profitable.	It helps with quick decisions about breeding and shows how well an AI program is working, ensuring constant milk production.

Farmers use the Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) and Cow Conception Rate (CCR) to help with breeding goals. Choosing bulls with high DPR scores improves herd fertility and encourages cows to give birth more often. This is usually combined with traits like milk production and disease resistance, which helps with herd health and long-term success.

CCR shows how well cows get pregnant after insemination, which helps determine whether the expensive semen works. Watching CCR also helps plan when to breed cows, reduce the time without calves, and identify any food or health problems to increase productivity.

Why Only Using Positive DPR Sires May Not Be The Best Strategy

Only bulls with a good Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) might not be the best way to make cows more fertile. That’s because many things affect how well cows can have calves. First, DPR isn’t very reliable because only a tiny part, about 4%, comes from genetics. Weather, food, and care matter more for cows with calves. Also, sometimes bulls with good DPR might not be as good at producing milk, so it’s better to balance these traits for healthy cows.

If you focus only on DPR, you could miss other vital traits like the Heifer Conception Rate (HCR) and Cow Conception Rate (CCR). These measures help understand how well cows can get pregnant. Plus, only thinking about genetics skips over essential factors like how cows are fed and cared for every day. Improving these areas can often boost how well cows reproduce faster and more effectively than just looking at their genes.

Another major problem with the Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) is that it doesn’t account for the time farmers let cows rest before breeding, known as the voluntary waiting period (VWP). For example, suppose a farm lets high milk-producing cows wait longer before breeding. In that case, these delays can make their fertility look worse in the DPR calculations. This happened with the bull Lionel, whose daughters have a low DPR of -4.4 but a better Cow Conception Rate (CCR) of -0.3. Lionel’s daughters produce much milk, so owners let them keep milking longer before breeding them. Even though they get pregnant quickly once bred, the DPR unfairly lowers their fertility score because it doesn’t take this waiting time into account. Unlike DPR, CCR focuses on whether cows get pregnant, not when they are bred. Reflecting the shift from DPR to CCR, Holstein USA has reduced DPR’s importance from 0.4 to 0.1 and increased CCR’s from 0.1 to 0.4 in their fertility index.

Embracing the Comprehensive Daughter Fertility Index

Farmers might consider using the Daughter Fertility Index (DFI) instead. DFI looks at more than just DPR, including calving ease and how often cows get pregnant, giving a better overview of a cow’s ability to reproduce. This helps farmers make better breeding choices, looking at the cow’s genetic traits and how well she fits into farm operations.

In many places, the Daughter Fertility Index (DFI) is key for judging a bull’s daughter’s reproduction ability. DFI includes:

Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR): Measures how many cows get pregnant every 21 days, showing long-term fertility.
Heifer Conception Rate (HCR): How likely young cows are to get pregnant when first bred.
Cow Conception Rate (CCR): Examines how often adult cows get pregnant after breeding.

Metric	Contribution to Profitability
Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR)	Reduces days open, leading to more consistent milk production cycles and lower reproductive costs, enhancing long-term genetic improvement.
Cow Conception Rate (CCR)	Focuses on immediate pregnancy success, reducing insemination costs, optimizing calving intervals, and improving short-term financial margins.
Daughter Fertility Index (DFI)	Combines genetic evaluations to target comprehensive fertility improvements, effectively balancing reproduction with production demands to maximize profit.

Looking at these factors, DFI gives a fuller picture of a bull’s daughters’ fertility, helping farmers make smart farm breeding decisions.

Harnessing Technology

The future of dairy farming is changing with new technology. Tools like automated activity trackers help farmers determine the best time to breed cows by watching their move. This helps make more cows pregnant, improving the Cow Conception Rate (CCR). For instance, devices like CowManager or Allflex watch how cows move and eat, helping farmers know when to breed. This can make CCR better by up to 10% in some cases. One tool, the SCR Heatime system, uses rumination and movement tracking to find the best times for breeding, potentially raising pregnancy rates by up to 15%.

Additionally, AI-powered imaging systems give detailed insights into cows’ health. They help find health problems early, making the herd healthier and more fertile. For example, some farms use AI systems that combine this tracking data with other scores to improve breeding choices, potentially boosting overall herd fertility by up to 20%.

Data analytics platforms are essential for managing herds. They help farmers understand large amounts of data and predict health and reproductive performance. Reducing open days or when a cow isn’t pregnant can improve the Daughter’s Pregnancy Rate (DPR).

Using data helps make dairy farms more efficient and profitable. These new tools allow for better choices, leading the way to the future of farming as we approach 2025 and beyond.

Leveraging DPR and CCR for Enhanced Herd Management

In today’s dairy farming, using the Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) and the Cow Conception Rate (CCR) helps improve herd management and make more money. Here’s how they can help:

Use DPR for Future Improvement: Choose bulls with high DPR scores to slowly improve your herd’s fertility. This can help cows get pregnant faster and shorten the time they don’t produce milk.
Apply CCR for Fast Results: Focus on CCR to speed up breeding decisions. This ensures that cows get pregnant on time and continue producing milk efficiently.
Leverage the Daughter Fertility Index (DFI): The DFI is an overall measure that includes genetic and environmental factors and can boost reproductive performance and sustainability.
Adopt New Technologies: Use advanced tools like health monitors and AI systems for real-time updates on cows’ health and fertility. These tools let you act quickly to fix any problems.
Review and Change Plans: Always review and change your breeding plans to accommodate your farm’s changing needs and market conditions.

Using DPR and CCR data to improve your breeding program, you can boost your herd’s fertility, productivity, and long-term gains, ensuring success on your farm. Start by checking your current metrics and getting advice from a breeding expert to make a customized plan for your herd.

The Bottom Line

We’ve discussed two essential ways to measure fertility in dairy cows: Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) and Cow Conception Rate (CCR). These are helpful tools for dairy farmers who want to get the most out of their cows, both now and in the future. Knowing when and how to use DPR and CCR helps farmers make smart choices that fit their needs.

The main idea here is about picking the right ways to improve how cows reproduce. As farming changes, mixing old methods with new technology is essential. Doing so can lead to a better and more prosperous future. This approach is like standing at a crossroads, choosing between old practices and the latest technology.

It’s time for dairy farmers to look at their plans for breeding cows. Using what they’ve learned can help them make better choices. Imagine a future where every cow is used to its full potential and every choice is based on data. Are you ready to solve the final piece of this puzzle and revolutionize your herd’s potential?

Key Takeaways:

Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) and Cow Conception Rate (CCR) are critical fertility metrics in dairy cattle breeding. Each provides unique insights into herd reproductive performance.
DPR evaluates long-term fertility and genetic improvement but is criticized for its instability due to calculation methods based on herd management variables rather than direct breeding outcomes.
CCR offers a more immediate assessment of a cow’s conception success, making it a practical tool for evaluating breeding effectiveness and managing costs in dairy operations.
The shift from primarily focusing on milk production to integrating fertility metrics like DPR and CCR is crucial for enhancing the profitability and sustainability of dairy farming.
Technological advancements in reproductive analytics are reshaping the dairy industry, offering farmers new tools to optimize reproductive strategies and overall herd management.
Farmers must balance DPR and CCR based on their specific operational goals. DPR favors long-term genetic strategies, while CCR addresses immediate breeding outcomes.

Summary:

The article looks at two essential tools in dairy farming: Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) and Cow Conception Rate (CCR). These help farmers decide how to breed cows for better fertility and milk production. In the past, dairy farming focused too much on milk, which hurt fertility. DPR helps understand long-term fertility, while CCR shows how likely a cow is to get pregnant now. New technology like activity trackers and AI can help make dairy farms more productive and sustainable. But be careful with DPR; it’s not perfect. DPR and CCR can help farmers make smart decisions to improve their farms.

Learn more:

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Categories : Genetic Evaluation System, Management

Tags : cow fertility, Dairy Farming, Daughter Pregnancy Rate, Milk Production

Fertility: You Get What You Breed For

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Wednesday, May 29th, 2013

How often have you heard a 4H leader, FFA member, classifier or show judge say a heifer or cow must have slope from her hips to her pins and be wide in the pins because that’s what we need for good fertility? Yes we have all heard that many times. But is it true? Could it be that the Holstein bloodlines we have selected were poorer for fertility than other bloodlines we left behind half a century ago? And that rump conformation has a low correlation with fertility.

A Colorful Opinion

Something we can all agree on is that the fertility levels in our herds, the world over, are not what breeders would like them to be. I well remember just a year ago when I had a discussion with an old time Jersey breeder. True to form he was telling this Holstein guy that Holstein breeders have ruined the breed. Sure higher butterfat and protein yields and udders much higher off the ground were great moves but why the excessive stature, very flat and deep rear rib and the demand that animals be tall in the front end when nature did not make them that way? “Jersey cows don’t need to have sloping rumps in order to quickly get back in-calf. So why do Holsteins need sloping rumps?” His bottom line was that by going for the tall skinny cow syndrome we have selected against reproductively sound females. His concluding statement was “You are breeding cows not runway models.” Think about it, shorter, rounder cows that may give a little less milk but get in-calf quicker are very likely preferred by milk producers to the tall, deep rear rib, walk uphill ones.

Have we won a Little but Lost a Lot?

Have we selected our Holsteins for the ones that do not quickly get back in-calf? Is it possible that our breeding strategies have taken us in a wrong direction when female fertility is frequently the biggest cow problem that breeders have? (Read more: How Healthy Are Your Cows?)

Certainly over the past half century the average production of Holsteins has doubled. And yes in the past decade we are seeing more outstanding scoring (type classification) cows. And the winners at the shows are super cows with awesome mammary systems.

However whether it is genetics, nutrition or management, our calving intervals are longer and pregnancy rates are perhaps half what they were forty years ago. As well with the need for breeders to focus today on profitability there is the need to replace high cost manual labour with technology and there are moves ahead pointing to less use of drugs and medicines for food safety reasons. Therefore we need to find some way to put reproduction efficiency back into the Holstein cow. And do it by selection rather than by cross-breeding.

Skinny at Odds with Conception

Research and breeder experience has brought to our attention that cows that have above average body conditioning get back in-calf quicker and with less trouble than cows that sacrifice their body condition due to high yields, poor nutrition, inadequate transition cow feeding, poor conformation, … or maybe some combination of all of those.

The Billion Dollar Question

So I ask. “Now that we have sire and cow indexes for Daughter Pregnancy Rate (USA) and Daughter Fertility and Body Condition Score (Canada) are breeders using those indexes in their Breeding Programs?”

Bulls That Get Used

The Canadian Dairy Network, last week, published the thirty Holstein sires with the most daughters registered in Canada in 2012 (Read more: Canadian A.I. Market Share and Most Popular Sires for 2012) accounting for 40% of the total registrations. The remaining 60% were sired by 5900 other bulls. The Bullvine decided to study in some depth the 20 sires with the most registered daughters in Canada in 2012. Those twenty sired 35% of the females registered which should be a good benchmark for where the breed is heading.

Table 1 Sire Comparison – 2012 Daughters Born vs. 2011 Top Sires Available

Group	LPI	Milk (kg)	Fat (kg / %)	Protein (kg / %)	CONF	MS	F&L	HerdLife	DF	SCS	Udepth	CA
20 Bulls-most registered 2012	2075	1031	60 /+.21%	41 / +.06%	15	12	8	105	98	2.89	4s	102
20 Bulls - top in 2011	2392	1393	67/+.16%	55 / +.07%	10	10	9	108	102	2.87	4s	104
Difference	-317	-362	-7	-14	5	2	-1	-3	-4	-0.02	0	-2

Table 1 compares the twenty sires with the most registered daughters in 2012 to the top twenty Canadian proven LPI sires available to Canadian breeders in 2011. The short answers to the comparisons are: breeders use sires with lower LPIs, less production, more type, less fertility and less Herd Life than the very top LPI sires that A.I. organizations marketed. The shocking truth is that ten of the top twenty most used sires were below average for their Daughter Fertility (DF) indexes. One of those twenty sires had a DF index of only 88 while the top two sires were rated at 107 & 106. High (top 10%) but not overly high.

In case you are wondering if this is a Canadian phenomenon you can refer to a recent Bullvine article (Read more: Top Sires North American Breeders Are Using). The sires with most registered daughters in the USA have the same deficiency in their genetic merit for female fertility. Six of the top ten bulls with the most registered daughters in the middle half of April 2013 were below average for Daughter Pregnancy Rate. Different country same story.

Let’s take the Bull by the Horns

Even though we have only had fertility indexes on bulls for a few years, we as breeders are not using them to genetically improve female fertility in our herds. And it likely goes beyond that – are our A.I. organizations using them when selecting the parents of the next generation of bulls? After all over 90% of the genetic improvement in a herd comes from the sires used.

Fertility Sires

Sires do exist that top the April 2013 North American TPI™ and LPI listings and have fertility ratings in the top 25% of the Holstein breed. Breeders wishing to genetically improve their herds for female fertility should consider the following sires:

Table 2 Top Sires with High Fertility – April 2013

Click on image for enlargement

Of course we all want to know what we will have to give up to get the female fertility. Further analysis of the twenty-four bulls listed in Table 2 shows that only significant concession would be in ‘show type’ for eight of the twelve top proven sires. All bulls on this listing have above average indexes for PTAT or CONF.

The Bullvine Bottom Line

Half a century of breeding for increased yields, taller and more angularity cows have taken their toll on the fertility in our herds. Female fertility indexes are available for both males and females. With genomics these indexes became much more accurate. Now is the time to put the genetics for female fertility back into our modern Holsteins. It is not a “Perhaps or Maybe”, it is a “MUST”!

Not sure what all this hype about genomics is all about?

Want to learn what it is and what it means to your breeding program?

Download this free guide.

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Categories : Management

Tags : Dairy Cattle Fertility, Daughter Fertility, Daughter Pregnancy Rate, LPI, Management, TPI

FACT VS. FANTASY: A Realistic Approach to Sire Selection

· Comments (6)

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

How often do you select a mating sire for the reasons you typically cull animals, as opposed to what your perceived ideal cow looks like? Further to our discussion about what the Perfect Holstein Cow looks like we here at the Bullvine started to ask ourselves, “How often do we choose our matings based on what we think the perfect cow looks like? vs. what our true management needs are?” Far too often sire selection is based on the fantasy of breeding that next great show cow or VG-89-2YR instead of facts needed to breed that low maintenance cow that will stay in your herd for many lactations and produce high quantities of milk. Do your sire selections overlook your management needs?

Speedy Selection. Long-Lasting Problems

Discernment is the hardest part of sire selection. Seeing your herd for what it is and what its genetic needs are is step one. Step two is choosing what will work for you almost three years from now when the daughters of the sires you use today will be entering the milking string. The old adage was “breed for type and feed for production.” But how many breeding stock animals have you sold recently based solely on conformation? How many will you be selling in three years based on their type? What are the revenue sources for your farm now and in the future? If your answer is “We get our revenue from the milk cheque from as few cows as possible and with as much profit per cow as possible” then selecting for type could mean that your sire selection is out of alignment with your management needs.

How Can You Tell If You Are You Out of Sync?

One place to determine where your herd has issues is to look at the reasons for and the frequency of culling. Every cow that leaves your herd for any reason other than a profitable sale is an indicator of the issues that could be arising from sire selection that is out of alignment with what is going on in your herd.

The Bullvine found the following information on milking age females that are removed from herds:

Over 35% of cows in a herd are replaced annually. That is costly!
The top known reasons for culling or removing cows are:
- Infertility / reproduction 23.1%
- Sold for dairy purposes 21.4%
- Mastitis 13.8%
- Feet and Legs 9.6%
- Low production 7.6%
- Total 75.5%
The other known reasons for culling or removing cows are:
- Injury 10.0%
- Sickness 7.0%
- Old Age 2.4%
- Diseases 1.8%
- Bad Temperament 0.9%
- Difficult Calving 0.9%
- Conformation 0.9%
- Slow Milker 0.6%
- Total 24.5%

Are You Breeding to Spend Money or Are you Breeding to Make Money?

You may be comfortable with your culling rate especially if it isn’t too far off “normal”. However when you look closely at the cows that remain in your herd how “needy” are they? Staff time, vet calls, hoof trimming, semen, drugs, supplies, extra time in the dry cow pen and removing cows from herds before they reach maturity – these all add up to significant dollars down the drain. Therefore, anything that can be done in sire selection to minimize these costs goes right to improving the financial bottom line. All unbudgeted costs mean less profit. If an animal is culled early, it does not matter where she placed at the local show or that her sire was a popular bull that left fancy udders. If he also left poor feet and low fertility, that costs you money.

A More Realistic Approach: Breed for the Bottom Line Not Just the Top Number

Often top bulls for total index are put forward to breeders for their use, without regard for the bull’s limiting factors. The Bullvine doesn’t support that approach. We recommendation that minimum sire selection values be set for the reasons cows are culled so that sires used in a herd don’t create new problems while the breeder tries to solve the current ones.

Here are the Bullvine we recommend the following requirements bulls should meet to be considered for use by bottom line focused breeders:

In Canada
- Lifetime Profit Index > +2000*
- Daughter Fertility > 100
- Somatic Cell Score < 2.90
- Feet & Legs > +5
In USA
- Total Performance Index > 2000*
- Daughter Pregnancy Rate > 1.0
- Somatic Cell Score < 2.90
- Feet & Legs Composite > 1.0

* A high minimum value has been set for both LPI and TPI to address the removal of cows for low production and so animals sold for dairy purposes can be in demand for their milk producing ability.

THE BULLVINE BOTTOM LINE

Every dairy breeder wants a superior herd and wants to eliminate the daily annoyances, costs and loss of valuable cows due to infertility, mastitis and feet problems and low production. Breeders should choose the best sires that correct the actual problems that they face in their herd instead of chasing a fantasy that has nothing to do with their reality.

Not sure what all this hype about genomics is all about?

Want to learn what it is and what it means to your breeding program?

Download this free guide.

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Categories : Mating Recommendations

Tags : Bad Temperament, Conformation, Daughter Fertility, Daughter Pregnancy Rate, Difficult Calving, Diseases, Feet & Legs Composite, Feet and Legs, Infertility, Injury, Low production, Mastitis, Old Age, Reproduction, Sickness, Sire Selection, Slow Milker, Sold for dairy purposes, Somatic Cell Score

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Archive for Daughter Pregnancy Rate

It’s Not Your Fans, It’s Your Genetics: Why Cows Quit Breeding at THI 60

At THI 60, some cow families keep breeding and some melt—same barn, same ration, same fans. That second group is quietly running your days open up 40 and costing 200–320 CAD a head.

What’s Really at Stake When THI Hits 60?

Why THI 60, Not 68?

How the Melters Give Themselves Away

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Does the Barn Math Actually Hold Up?

Four Paths That Actually Change the Herd

Path 1: The One-Rule-Tonight Plan

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Path 3: The Hot-Pens-First Sire List

Path 4: The Full Three-Year Reset

Quick Comparison: Which Path Fits Your Barn?

What This Means for Your Operation

Key Takeaways

Run Your Numbers

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Fertility Bulls Failing? Your PTAs Are 30% Inflated – Here’s the Fix

31% of dairy services now use beef semen. Fertility evaluations? Still pretending it’s 2005. No wonder your PTAs don’t work.

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The Five Games: When One Size Doesn’t Fit Anyone

What Progressive Producers Are Learning the Hard Way

Practical Steps for Managing Through the Uncertainty

Industry Trends Reshaping How We Think About Fertility

What’s Actually Changing in 2026 (If Everything Goes Through)

The Bigger Picture: Why Change Takes Forever

Looking Ahead: What This Means for Different Operations

Key Takeaways for Your Breeding Program

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<img decoding="async" width="150" height="174" align="right" class="wp-image-470089" style="width: 150px;" src="https://www.thebullvine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Bullvine-Daily-350.png" alt="">The Sunday Read Dairy Professionals Don’t Skip.

Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) vs. Cow Conception Rate (CCR): Which will help you improve your herd’s fertility?

Learn the main differences between DPR and CCR in dairy cow fertility. How can these measures improve your herd’s breeding success and profits?

The Evolution of Dairy Cow Fertility Metrics

Delving Into Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR)

The Precision of Cow Conception Rate

Contrasting DPR and CCR

Why Only Using Positive DPR Sires May Not Be The Best Strategy

Embracing the Comprehensive Daughter Fertility Index

Harnessing Technology

Leveraging DPR and CCR for Enhanced Herd Management

The Bottom Line

Key Takeaways:

Summary:

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<img decoding="async" width="150" height="174" class="wp-image-470089" align="right" style="width: 150px;" src="https://www.thebullvine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Bullvine-Daily-350.png" alt="">Join the Revolution!

Fertility: You Get What You Breed For

A Colorful Opinion

Have we won a Little but Lost a Lot?

Skinny at Odds with Conception

The Billion Dollar Question

Bulls That Get Used

Table 1 Sire Comparison – 2012 Daughters Born vs. 2011 Top Sires Available

The Sunday Read Dairy Professionals Don’t Skip.

The Sunday Read Dairy Professionals Don’t Skip.

The Sunday Read Dairy Professionals Don’t Skip.

Join the Revolution!