Start in, I’m just going to start in with our panel here and and throw out some questions. So I’ll go around you guys and I’ll I’ll call on you guys. So the first question I have is let’s start with the 21 day pregnancy rate. So I’m sure you guys all know what that is. And so let’s go ahead.I’m going to start with Jeff. Jeff, what are you guys running right now? We’re right around 38%. We used to be in about the mid 40s until we started implementing more sexed semen and then as we’ve started catching more on the beef, on dairy. Our herd is older too. So we’ve slipped a little bit from the mid 40s to about the high 30s.Yeah, those are two, those are two good reasons why you might see a bit of a change. How and how long would you say you’ve had? That’s a high preg rate. OK, I’m going to say anything in the mid 30s or higher is pretty high. How long have you guys been been able to achieve that then? Probably since 2014, fifteen when we kind of did some auditing of our program and started double ovsynch and changed everything around.OK, good. Chuck, you’re next. Yeah, hi. Our preg rate right now is running about 42%. It’s been there probably for the last 3-4 years pretty much. Pretty much keep it there with with good protocols in place and compliance with how we’re doing things. So yeah, we’re real happy where we’re at right now.All right, Dave, yes, good morning, everybody. We run about 41%. Also, I would agree with what Chuck said, protocol implementation and following protocol is very, very important. Something we stress with implementing them protocols is minutes matter, not hours. So when you have a bunch of ovsynch, set up, it matters what end of the pen you start on, where you start, how you start.Minutes matter, not hours. It’s very, very important. Timing is key. Great. So all right guys, one of the questions I’m getting these are you guys, these are very high preg rates, high, high 30s, low 40s. One of the biggest questions I’m getting now when I’m out and about doing my Extension work is you’re drying off cows, obviously giving a high amount of milk when you have these high preg rates.So as you get higher and higher preg rates cows, you’re going to be drying off cows giving a lot of milk. So I guess my question is, how do you guys have specific protocols for drying off cows giving a lot of milk? Or are you just going ahead and drying them off and maybe something about your, your dry cow program? So let’s go with Dave first.Yeah, so we used to just dry cows off. And you’re right, we do. We dry off like a lot of cows that are milking 100 a day yet, But we used to just dry them off. They were on full milk, full feed and just dry them off. And that was pretty hard on her. She bellered a lot. We had some milk leakage. We didn’t see a lot of mastitis problems, but she was uncomfortable and so last year we added a little piece of barn on for some special needs hoof trimming and stuff.And so we made a little pen in the corner. And so now five days before she goes dry, we put her in that pen. We take her from three times a day to two times a day milking and she starts eating dry cow feed. So by the time we dry her off, she’s pretty low on production and that has made a tremendous difference on cow comfort wise.We really, really like it. I’m very, very happy we implemented that and wish I would have did it years ago. OK, great, Chuck. Yeah. Well, we, we pretty much on the day of dry off, we, we, we try to get a 56 to 60 day dry off period. And we pretty much dry them off at, you know, they milk three times a day, but they’re, they’re dried off cold And, and once they get dried off, they, they go right into the dry pen into a different ration.And obviously with the dry cows, we don’t dry treat hardly any cows anymore and we don’t use seal teat sealant anymore just because we’re, we’re trying to get away from some of that. We do monitor them very close to the first four or five days and if there’s any problems, we’ll pull them back out and, and do what we need to do.But we’ve had really good luck just drying them off flat and, and kind of leaving them as they are. We have tried some boluses. There’s some reaction like a Bovikalc dry bolus that we we’ve used on the highest producing cows and it seems to be working just fine. Not, not a big issue that we’re having with what the protocols would have in place.OK, great. Jeff. We’re 2X milking. So we’re already backed off a little bit compared to others. But towards the end, if I usually base it off their log cell count score and then we’ll shorten the dry period a little bit. If they’re still milking pretty heavy, I still shoot for a 60 day dry period.Otherwise it’s like 53. I’ll just wait a week or two if they’re still milking heavy. But otherwise we just basically quit cold turkey. We do still dry treat and use Orbeseal so and switch ration obviously when we move them down so good. Yeah, that’s just a question. I’ve been getting a lot out there.How do we how are we dealing with these cows? I mean that’s a logical out working of really good repro. It’s something that people are asking so interesting to hear. Let’s get into your repro program, some specifics then how about what is your first service breeding program in the voluntary waiting period you’re currently using? And is it the same for first lactation and and older cows? So let’s go Jeff, why don’t you go ahead and go with that one.We have a 76 day voluntary waiting period is the earliest we’ll breed them. We herd check every two weeks. So our average is like 83 days on the 1st breeding, we’ll use double ovsynch. We’ll vaccinate, use double ovsynch protocol. It’s the same protocol for both 1st and later lactation. The only difference is we do double dose the GnRH on that second round of ovsynch for older cows.Not the two year olds. Not the two year olds. And then we do, I do vet check on that first, and that second round of ovsynch to make sure we’re cycling and everything’s fine. We’ll implement a cidr if we have to, if we’re the good CL. And when did you, when did you implement the second prostaglandin for the older cows? Oh, the second prostataglandin, I guess I’ve done that for 3-4 years.But then I do double dose the GnRH 2 on that second round as well. Which, which GnRH treatment are you talking about? The first, the vet check 1. So it’d be the starting the second round of ovsynch. Well, that was something the vet recommended to try. I guess. I’ve only been doing that for about 6 months, so I’m not 100% sure if that’s doing much good or not.But then the double lut shot, I’ve been doing that for four or five years and I think that’s helped. OK, good, good. Dave. Similar. We’re 78 day voluntary waiting period. We are same on cows and heifers or yeah, first lactation and older cows. We toyed around with pushing back that voluntary waiting period on the on the 1st lactation cows, but decided not to.I don’t know if it paid or not. We do the double prostaglandin. We do do the double GnRH as well. We are still presynch ovsynch It’s always worked well for us. So we’ve stuck with presynch ovsynch We do not preg check at all before or ultrasound them before. I should say we just go ahead and do a timed breeding on them.Yeah. So just to clarify, no, you’re not breeding anything. You’re doing 100% timed AI off the presynch ovsynch protocol. Yes. There’s no cherry picking. Absolutely not. We did that years and years ago and when we went away from it, our pregnant preg rate or conception rate went up considerably.Don’t, don’t, don’t be very cherry picking. It’s not worth it. Good. That’s that’s always good to hear that. So yeah. And that presynch ovsynch program is a is a great program for timed AI Especially so Chuck. Yeah, we don’t cherry pick either. So anyway, we we use the we use the pre, we call it the presynch 14 day program.You know, we obviously started with the prostaglandin on, on a one shot in the prostaglandin two shot, you know at like 41 to 47 days and second shot at 52 to 59, whatever it is. Then then after that we would start them on ovsynch with the GnRH. Every Tuesday we have our herd check and and that’s when we start the cows on ovsynch.Everybody’s on the ovsynch program. We we used to tail chalk all our cows and breed daily. We are now on a strict all ovsynch synchronized program where we only breed on Fridays. So we pretty much we do the double prostaglandin. So when she started on ovsynch, we’ll we’ll the next day we’ll we’ll give her the prostaglandin again and then that’ll be Tuesday.Then Wednesday morning prostagland. Thursday afternoon about 5-6 o’clock. We’ll give them all who’s on the ovsynch program GnRH. Then we’ll breed Friday morning between 9:30 to 11:30. Just all up 1 some, we have to be careful. Yeah, it’s a lot of cows to breed in a week for us with 1000 cow dairy.But we make sure our calf program and and our stalls and everything are are prepared for big, Big Lots of freshenings at a time. So it works very good for us on on that end. So our voluntary waiting period, I I thought it was like 78. So it’s like 81 from what I looked at yesterday. So we’re at actually at 81 days.We have thought also about moving that up to or pushing it back because of the high producing cows. But the few, few, few people that I have heard and the, the few talks I’ve run on it, it doesn’t make a big difference. Or it, it’s, it’s not helping that much to do that. You’re actually taking more of a chance on getting that cow too far out and and not pregnant or bred.So we’re, we’re not, we’re just staying with protocol of where we’re at. All right. And it looks like Mike, you’ve joined us here. You can hear me. Yes, I can. Sorry about that. We had some technical difficulties. Not, not a problem. I’m going to I, I’m going to go ahead and shoot a couple questions that you might just so we can catch up.Current 21 day pregnancy rate in your lactating dairy cows. Where are you guys sitting right now? As of yesterday we are at a 39 Excellent. And do you have a protocol for drying off high producing dairy cows? Currently we do not. We have tried some different things throughout the years, but it kind of ended up going off of BST here.Our cows aren’t producing quite as much going dry and we couldn’t really find anything that worked for us as far as the amount of cows, where you put the cows, you know, switching from three time a day milking to two time a day milking. So we’ve just kind of gone away from it and are just drying everything off that dry off and that seems to be just working fine.Yeah, it it, it really hasn’t. We thought we were doing a lot of good and I’m sure we could if we could figure out a better strategy, but I don’t think it’s really impacted. I herd overall in a negative way. And then the the next question that I asked everyone is just describe your first service breeding protocol in your voluntary waiting period.So our voluntary waiting period is 70 days. We do not cherry pick. We are on just a very simple presynch ovsynch schedule. GnRH 12 to 16 hours before timed AI and we start enrolling cows in our presynch at in between 36 and 42 days in milk. Now have you added the second prostaglandin in the ovsynch part of the program where you give you give that second prostaglandin after 24 hours after the first. Correct.OK, good. What about first service conception rates where where you guys running off of those programs and let’s just go around. I’m interested in that Dave First service will be like right around 60. You know, obviously depends, but 62 to 58, so I call it right around 60 on cows and heifers. on cows and heifers. Jeff. I think we’re around 50 now.We used to be a lot higher before we ’cause we use basically first service out of most of our 2 year olds as sexed semen now. So that’s kind of dropped it. But we used to sit a lot higher. on that., Chuck, yeah, I think on the, on the 1st service with, with the virgin heifers, we’re actually only like 53%.It’s pretty much all sexed semen. But on our cows, we’re actually hitting about that 58-57 on the cow side because I don’t know, just more beef semen or whatever. Not, you know, only 15% of the, the heavy milk cows are getting sexed semen. So I think that helps the number a lot. Sure, Mike, 59 overall, we’re running about 54 on sexed semen, and then about 66 on beef.Yeah. So you guys, you guys, I’m assuming you guys, I’m not going to guess your ages here, but I’m assuming you guys have been doing this for a while, more than 20 years. I would guess close to close to 20 years. Do you guys remember what was, what was conception rate in your farms 20 years ago? 5th we were at like 15%, maybe even 13% back in the back in 88.I guess I’ll, I’ll, I’ll when I graduated high school. So I’ll tell you where I went from there. But you know, and then we really didn’t even AI until mid 90s to be honest, when we got our first freestall barn. But yeah, it was terrible. We never really tracked any of that stuff. But as we’ve worked with you, the UW and, and our nutritionists and, and some of the AI companies, we’ve actually put a big, big presence on that and, and the need for it.And over the years we’ve really improved mostly probably with the protocols in place and having the compliance of that. That’s, that’s about everything. Like, like, you know, everything’s about the timing. Yep, Yep. Good, Jeff, we were actually bull bred up until I went to College in 2007, 2008 and we started right in and ovsynch.When we got started, the vet started us right in on that ’cause it was the new and upcoming thing and our heat detection might not have been the greatest because we had a bull running around. So that’s we’ve been ovsynching for that long, I guess. But I think it’s definitely since we started doing the double ovsynch and then fine tune the presynch ovsynch, I think our conception rates definitely improved a lot.I don’t think we were ever 15% because we had a bull at that time. But yeah. But who knows what he was, right, Dave? Yeah, Well, yeah. And he got kind of ordinary once in a while. So exactly. Yeah. Dave. Yeah. I started farming on my own in 2002 on a rental facility. And I don’t remember exactly where we were, but I’m sure it was in the 30s.It was not great. So the the when when you started the timed AI stuff, that was a game changer. Absolutely great. Mike, you remember, Yeah, Maple Ridge has been been doing, ovsynch for a lot of years. But but as information and technology has gotten better, it’s improved. I’m not sure what it was 20 years ago, but it’s, I would say probably roughly half of what it is today.Yeah. You know, you guys, it’s such an amazing story. I, I’m glad that you guys shared those things. I mean, we went from bull breeding to artificial insemination. And if you would have told me 20 years ago, you know, the numbers that you guys are seeing now with preg rates and 1st service conception rates, it’s just unbelievable what we’ve done.You know, we like to take all the credit for the synchronization programs. There’s lots of other things you guys have done. You’ve gotten better at forage management. The facilities are probably better. There’s lots of things there, but but we’ll take some of the credit with the synchronization programs.OK. So another question, other technology that’s really kind of increased of late are these automated activity monitoring systems. I want to know if you guys have one of those systems and maybe how you’re using it for repro and maybe also include if you’re using it for transition cow management or maybe you don’t have a system.So Chuck, I’m going to start with you, OK? Yeah. We never had anything other than milk weights through our parlor that would kind of give us any kind of clue if a cow needed a little extra attention. But last December, we did, we did. We did purchase a, a, a temperature bolus that we put in all the cows.So it’s very early in the going, very early stages and we more or less use that more for our transition cows and calvings. My brother Troy is, and he’s involved with the dry cows and, and all the freshenings and stuff like that. He’s really using that, that, that service for, for looking for when they’re going to calve and things like that.We kind of, we leave them on free stalls until we know they’re going to calf. And then we, you know, probably an hour before they’re going to calf where we feel they’re going to calf. Then they put on the, then we put them on the bed pack to watch them. So that’s been working good. As far as the repro side, maybe watching a little bit more on our virgin heifer side.We we also put them in our virgin heifers on the cow side. I’m watching it, but we’re not implementing anything yet. You know, everything’s going so well. We don’t want to screw it up, but we hope in the future maybe we could use it more by that for the reproduction. But right now we’re just focusing on the transition cows with that, with that bolus.And we’re we’re seeing pretty good results this last last couple months already. My daughter Kaylin is our herds lady and she’s really learning the system well and looking up. And we used to have our post fresh all locked up, you know, for an hour or two when we’re temping every cow or every other day or whatever, whatever needed cows needed to be.Where now she can just get a herdman herdsman list through this program and she’s maybe checking half the cows. And we’re really down on, on treating for ketosis and things like that. So I think we’re just catching cows that much quicker and just being proactive with, with our protocols and the, the system’s actually working better than I thought.Great. Mike, we do not, we DHIA test once a month. And no, no technology as far as heat detection. OK, Jeff, we have activity monitors and the heifers. We did invest for that mainly ’cause I don’t want to walk over there three times a day. That shed is not where I’m at. But for the cows, I guess I would.It’s kind of on my wish list someday. I’d like activity monitors or something for transition cow health. But what I always do is three times a day, I do walk all the pens. I have the 21 day interval every Monday. We tail paint all the cows that are on the 21 day interval for Wednesday of that week.I walk the pens three times a day, basically physically find each cow looking at tail heads, watching them and basically that’s kind of how I can catch most of them coming off if they don’t settle that first time time AI and the same with the fresh cows. I’m always walking that pen if I can help it after chores.And then we do have temps on our milk weights in the parlor which helps with fresh cow health as well. I’m always looking at the meters when they’re in there and see if there’s anybody we need to check on or temp otherwise. But as far as activity monitoring goes, just a heifer shed. My works great for the most part.I do struggle with it if I sort them around or if we bed the shed. Seems like the whole heifer shed’s in heat on the same day, but you gotta dig through the algorithms and stuff there a little bit. But I do love it in the heifer shed. Great. Dave, we do not have any activity monitoring either. We looked at it a few years ago.I, I, we did a trial run. We didn’t care for it. My stance is I want to stay up to date on it, keep it in front of me. If I lose a couple good key members of the team, then it’s going to become probably more, more important. It’ll be a tool that we use. But for now, no, everything is done by employees.They’re, they’re great with the cows. They’re, they can pick them out. So that’s how we do it for now. Fresh cows, we are still kind of old school. We lock them up, we check them. Get them to pee. Our fresh cow health is pretty good, so that goes quick, but we do lock them up every morning. All right, great.So I want to move on to the preg check. There’s different technologies for doing this now. So when and how are you doing your preg check after you do that first breeding then. So let’s start with Dave. OK, well I have preg check here in about 45 minutes. So we as soon as we’re done here, I’m going to head back out in the pens and check cows.But we check at 32 days, We ultrasound, we ultrasound every other week. So at 32 days to 45 days, that’s our PG1. We PG 2 with the ultrasound also at 55 to 68 days. And then for our dry off or what I call our PG threes, we use the milk test for that. So and then when we’re doing our PG threes, that’s when we sex.Also, we used to be more important when you use conventional semen. Now we use basically no conventional Holstein semen anymore. So it’s either beef or sex, but you still get a few bull calves. So it helps with projections looking forward for heifer flow, calf flow numbers, just herd projections. So that’s why we still sex.OK, good. Chuck Yeah, we had just got done with preg checks here. We do them like I said every Tuesday. So we’re we’re ultrasound and everything at 32 days, 32 days bred if open, most likely they will get a cidr if and or if we have to re enroll them, like I said, or or actually, if they’re open with us being in the in the program, we give them GnRH the week before.So this week, if she’s open, we can actually turn her over and breed her on Friday again. So yeah, yeah, yeah. So that way, that way, if we do get them open today that they were all right, they’re automatically in the synch program and and we’ll treat them like the synch cow and and breed them on Friday.We’ll recheck pregnants at all at 67 days. At that time. We also want to sex them. We mostly just use sexed semen and beef semen. No more conventional in our farm either. It’s been a couple years already, I think since we’ve used conventional semen so but we still like the sex them. The the vets are so good at at checking that and so quick that even if they’re beef, my brother likes to know if they’re heifer or bull.Same with the sexed semen. We want to make sure that, you know, she’s still sex ’cause you know, there’s still be about 5 to 8% that are that sex semen will will come out as a Holstein bull calf. But so, yeah, pretty much there and then our then 6, four to six weeks before to dried off our milk testing company will will do a milk milk sample at that time.And we like to do it that way. So we’re not bothering the cow much less irritation for the cow, one less time to be sleeved. So we, we do like that for on the late lactation pregnancy check that that works really well for us ’cause we had in the past if we sleeved them all, we every once in a while we’d we’d get a couple off feed because of the irritation, I think from the sleeving that late lactation.But so the milk, the milk thing is very accurate and we’ve been using it for a long time. How many cows do you do you find open at that late check? Very, very few. Very few. Yep. And and a lot of them, it’s funny, a lot of them might have been twins with twins in the same horn kind of thing. So it’s important.But yeah. OK, Jeff, we check at 32 days usually. If they’re open and it’s they’ve only been serviced once, we’ll just re enroll on a regular ovsynch If they’re open and then they’ve been bred twice, we’ll do a cidr synch twice or later. And then we do do another check at 60 like they said, we sex them at 60 if we have to.I guess I don’t get as worried about a sexed semen or beef, I don’t really care. We raise everything and then we do another check later like 110 days and then I have it set up. They get a couple vaccines at that point to a lepto and something else. So yeah, good Mike. Yeah, we check you at 32 days.If they are open, we will re enroll for the following week. We do not use any cidrs Our P twos are at 60D at 60 days. We do sex to all of our calf beef and Holstein and then we will have a dry off check, which is close to that 200 day days carried calf. Yeah. If I could comment again, Paul on our program, I’d said anybody open gets a gets a cidr And our virgin heifer program, it’s like that.But with the cow program, unless they’re cystic or or the vet doesn’t like what he’s feeling, then they’ll get a cidr But if not, then we’ll just re, we’ll reenroll. Yeah, probably based on a presence or absence of a corpus luteum is usually what we’re we’re telling the vets as far as whether or not you use a cidr Exactly.Yep. Good, good. Yeah. OK, so here’s a question that I think of a lot and I want to see how it’s maybe changed over time. How how many chances do you give a cow before you give up trying to get her pregnant? How many breedings is is are your cows going to get? Is it, is it a standard number? Does it depend on the cow? What does that look like, Dave? So that’s cow by cow for us.There is some cows, maybe only three or four breedings and some cows get out to six or seven depending. You know, if she’s 250 days of milk and we’re checking her and she’s still milking 130 lbs a day, I’ll go ahead and resynch her. We resynch out everything as well. So we’ll resynch her and if she’s open, we’ll lut her and or, or give her a prostaglandin and breed again.But you get a cow that’s a problem transition or is maybe getting up there in lactations. We will just mark her as no more AI. That’s a term we use meaning if she comes back in heat, she just gets checked open and then is DNB. But so it’s a cow by cow basis for us. OK, Jeff. It’s kind of cow by cow basically when we get start hitting that 180-200 day window, it’s whether I keep throwing services at her kind of depends on that.But for the most part, you know, if we’re breeding them, we’ll have 3-4 services and they’re pretty easy. But I never go any farther in like 220 days. It’s got to be a awfully nice 2 year old to even try it at that point. So they’re worth more as cull cows at that point than they are still milking.Prices are up, Chuck. Yeah, same thing kind of here on that. But I mean, it’s all about production. It’s all about how the cow looks, how she’s walking, how good of an udder she has in production. Just just the cow in general. We’re pretty hands on here yet. Where and I I make the vet list every every week so if there is one that’s not milking as well or I know she’s been bred enough times I will put on the sheet if open DNB.So the people out in the barn do know that, hey, we’re not going to resynch her. We’re not going to start her again. But it’s mainly, mostly about, about their production. If they’re milking well and they’re looking fine. Yeah, I, I get some out there five, 5 * 6 times. My, my vet, the one he, he gets a little ornery about it, you know, or he’s like, we should just DNB.And he’s probably right. But, you know, I, I still have some favorite cows here and there. And so I watch it pretty closely and then I will give up on some a little bit quicker, depending mostly on production. OK. How did they transition? Also, how did they transition? You know, was she a, was she a hard transition? Did she have twins early on? And I mean, some cows just going to tell you when they freshen already that, hey, I’m probably not going to get pregnant again.Awesome. Mike. Yeah, I’m kind of with Chuck there. It’s pretty much based off of production when when they’re getting out there, four or five services and over 200 days in milk, it’s how much milk are they given, What’s their body condition? Are they up there in lactations? I do tend to to give those two year olds, you know, one or two more extra services than I would an older cow just because I’d like to keep them in the herd.But yeah, don’t agree with Chuck there. OK, good. All right. So I want to switch gears a little bit. You guys all alluded to the fact that you’re using sexed and beef semen. I want you to just describe how, you know, I think the question is how, how do you decide which cows to breed with what semen type, how many times you’re going to breed them with say sexed semen? Are you genomic testing or using pedigrees, something maybe about the beef sires that you’re using? So just a little bit more about how you’re using sexed and beef semen.So Mike, I’m going to start with you. We are genomic testing. We kind of dabbled in it maybe 10 years ago. We would test a group of 200-300 and then we would not do it for a year or two. But we’ve kind of since about 2015, sixteen just pull on everything gets genomic tested and that’s how we’re figuring out where our replacements are coming from.About 80% of them are coming from our virgin heifers and about 20 of them are coming from our two year old group here at the dairy. Our beef semen usage, we’re strictly just beef semen and sexed semen, no conventional. We are about 95% Limousin semen that we’re using in our cows. Our heifers are getting strictly Angus.So we like the birth weights on the beef on the Limousin beef a little bit better than the Angus. So that’s kind of our strategy there. Are you selling those crossbred calves right away or are you you feeding them out? No, we are selling them about a week, you know, five to seven days old. OK, good. Jeff.All of our virgin heifers get sexed semen twice and then they’ll get conventional after that. 2 year olds, the majority of them get sexed the first time and then they’ll be beef after that unless it’s a really outstanding 2 year old. I might try again but. And then the rest is all beef. We use Angus semen for our beef.We do finish out our steers I guess. We’ve been raising them my entire life. We’ve been used to have pigs when I was in high school so but we’ve we’ve raised steers since it before it was cool. The only difference is now our steer sheds probably 80-90% beef crosses instead of Holsteins. So that’s worked out real nice for us.But yeah, we finished them out. And yeah, though since you’re finishing those out, the question is sexed beef semen? Any sexed beef semen? Have you thought about it or you have you tried it or we’ve tried it, but my problem is with it. I’m using beef on my lower fertility animals. So when I start throwing the sex at it, then I’ve got an open cow that I want pregnant.So it’s not worth it to us. We just raise beef heifer crosses, I guess, and it takes them a month or two longer to get there. But I also don’t have an open bunch of open cows running around that I’m still trying to throw sex male at. So I guess we’ve dabbled in it, but we didn’t stick with it.OK. It’s a big question. I think that’s out there now. So, Chuck, what about you? Yeah, well, we’ve been genomically testing all, all our heifer calves for a long time or since it came out. It’s it’s been very important. We’ve used it, we use it a lot of my lot of a lot of the things how I do with the animal are made off the genomic markers and stuff like that.So right now we got about 80% of the cows at our dairy are, are are bred to beef and obviously 20% to sexed semen. The heifers, 85% are bred to sexed semen and about 15% actually get bred to beef because on the heifers side we’ll give them about four services per consumption on the virgin heifers. On the cow side, it’s mostly 2 year olds or cows that get sexed semen at the dairy are over 800 net merit.That’s kind of how I judge it or DWP is kind of how I keep them. But net merit is what I look at for breeding if anybody over 800 gets gets made into sexed semen. And then from there, I still judge if I’m going to use sex semen on an animal when it comes time to breed her. So not everything usually 2 services of sexed semen on the mature cows and then after that it goes to beef semen.Like I said, the genomics are genomics are a big part of how I breed the cows and and what I use. We use a SIM Angus in focus beef semen. We got four or five guys that buy the buy the calves at three to 10 day old. They’re all very happy. They don’t care if it’s a heifer or a bull. So we haven’t tried the sexed beef semen at all.So that’s where we are there. Great, Dave. All right. We do not genomic test. We use lifetime net merit parent average is how we rank our cows and our heifers. And then we breed beef and sexed according to that. We have 86% of the cows are bred beef and 19% of the heifers are bred beef. And then obviously 81% of the heifers are sexed and 14% of the cows are sexed.That’s how we determine that. We use an Angus bull. We sell our calves three days a week. We have a guy that comes and picks them up. We get paid the same on heifers and bulls. So we are not using any sorted semen that way because as long as she’s he or she is over 75 lbs, we’re paid the same. So no sex semen there.We do breed. We will breed twice sexed if she’s deemed good enough for Holstein, then we breed twice sexed, and then we’ll use a little bit of conventional semen after that. So that’s how we determine who gets what. OK, great. Angie’s got her hand up, I thought. I think a question came in, Angie.Yes. For the panelists, if there’s one thing you could change about your repro program, what would it be? All right, you guys heard the question. One thing you could change about your, you know, these preg rates are pretty doggone high. Let’s see if there’s anything you could change, Jeff. Well, I already stated my frustration with the heifer shed and the activity monitors.I wish I could. I don’t know how to fix that. But then the other thing that I guess we don’t, we don’t currently genomic test that’s something maybe we should do is based off pedigree matings. I know with my inventory numbers that the AI company goes through once a year that I need 6 heifers a month.So if I have 7 or 8 or if I have a few extra, I’m just going off parent average or lung scores in the calf barn. We move out of the calf barn, they get identified as steers coming out. So we’d probably be better off doing some more genomic testing and being more accurate on who we’re culling out of the calf barn and throwing in the steer shed would be something David. As far as changes to the protocol, I, I can’t think of anything I would want to change right now. You know, my nutritionist has told me this years ago that I really like. You can fix it till it’s broke. So we try not to mess with too many things once they’re working. So we’re going to stick with the that’s why we’re still pre synch ovsynch because it works.So we’re at this point, I don’t see any changes being made, Chuck. Yeah, not much either. You know, when you got good numbers, you don’t want to screw around with what what good things are. I guess some of the simple things would be, as you know, if there’s some way we could move that GnRH shot from Thursday at six O clock back to four, that would help, you know, or, you know, that way, that way, my herdsmen don’t have to be here a couple hours later on that Thursday.But it’s such an important timing shot that that’s the way it is. And that’s the way we’re going to have to do it. And, and I hope in the future that that some of these monitoring systems get get good enough or or you know, that where maybe it it takes some of this these, you know, administration of, of medicine, you know, to the cows get less in the future, hopefully, but not right now, but hopefully sometime in the future.Mike. Yeah, I kind of agree with these guys. There’s not too much I would change as of today. We’ve changed a lot of things over the last probably 8 years and things are going really good. So I guess maybe invest in some activity monitoring technology to catch some of those standing heats that we we miss sometimes.Good. Yeah, that’s a question that that we used to deal with, I think a lot. Now the preg rates are pretty high. I think people are pretty happy with where they are with repro. We kind of know how to how to get this done now and there’s obviously new technologies that are always coming that we have to take a look at.One more question on the cows before we move on to the heifers. For a long time in Wisconsin, herd turnover rates sat in the low 40s. Now that we have really high preg rates, you guys can manage your herd turnover rate because you can produce the number of heffers that you need as far as culling. So what I want to know what your herd turnover rate goal is nowadays and and what it, whether you’re there or whether you’re, whether you’re still trying to to manage that.So Chuck, let’s start with you. I was hoping you wouldn’t start with me. But anyway, we’re, we’re actually pretty high guys. We’re we, we sat there at 42 for a long time here and I looked at three different things yesterday. I have a hard time determining that, you know, because we do sell a lot of dairy cows.Probably 20% of our whole are herd or over 200 cows a year or sold. To other dairymen just because I’m a heifer hoarder and I and I love to get heifers, you know, so I have animals that sell. It’s kind of a niche market, but 42 is the turnover rate. They say that’s not the dairy sales aren’t in that.So but, and another thing I was looking at yesterday, I was only at 35 so, but yeah, probably higher than I want, but it’s totally voluntary. I, you know, I’m sure you’re going to have some cows that die once in a while and, but most of the cows we sell are, you know, it’s because I want to sell them.It’s it’s not just because we absolutely have to, you know, so I don’t know. Yeah, so some it’s high, but I’m I’m comfortable with it. Yeah, thanks Chuck. And you know, the the reason for this question is that herd turnover rate is basically determined by the availability replacements.And when we didn’t have good repro, I mean, we just didn’t have a lot of replacements. So you were kind of forced that determined the thing. Now that we’ve got really good repro, we can determine this number. So, so Dave, where where are you guys sitting? So that’s a number I track every month.I can tell you the last year we were 21. 8% cull and death 2.7% death and 19. 1% cull rate. That’s a number I watch really, really close. So you asked for goals. I definitely want to be less than 2% on death rate. You know you’re going to have crazy things. Them are cows that go to slaughter and get tanked for whatever reason.The BLV, which is the topic for next month, is important. We’re trying to eradicate that out of the herd. But also a broken leg, things like that, weird stuff. So my goal is to be less than 2%. And then I would like to get our overall turnover rate down less than 20%. That’s my goal. OK, Mike, right now we’re sitting at a 29% turnover rate.My goal is kind of always to be in that 26 to 30. Somewhere’s in there. It kind of depends. If you’re trying to add a few cows here and there, that number can fluctuate a little bit. But I agree with you with the better repro. But you can really dial that into how many replacements you need every month.Good. Jeff, our cull, right, not including dairy is 27%. But if you had dairy and we’re actually over like 40 or 41, we’re still selling some dairy privately. Dairy replacements, 2 year old milking 2 year olds and three-year olds. I guess my goal is to ultimately not have to do that. I’d rather just have more beef crosses.So that’s our goal every year we go through our inventory numbers of the AI stud is we’re trying to balance out exactly how many heifers I need a month. And I actually keep a log every herd check of how many heifers I’ve made and make sure I’m on par. Because if you get a couple bad herd checks, all of a sudden I’m shortened myself or a couple really good ones and I got too many.So I keep a log every herd check of how many heifers I’ve made. And I’m really trying to fine tune that number because even though dairy replacements are selling pretty good now, I’ve spent years not making money on selling dairy replacements. So all right, great, you guys, excellent repro on the cow side.Now we’re going to jump into heifers. And this is, I think, I think there’s anything we need to work on it as an industry is getting better at heifers. So let’s start with what is your current 21 day preg rate for the heifers? Are you and just include, are, are you raising your own heifers or are those, are they, are they home or away? I guess is what, how we put that? So Jeff, let’s start with you.We raise everything. Ours are home, they’re on a pen pack. Our 21 day preg rate, I guess I could have had a hard time finding it. I don’t know if it’s 34, if I’m looking at the numbers wrong, but it could be a little bit better there. We will start breeding that a year and two months based off the aid activity monitors.And like I said, I get a little noise with the every time you bed the shed and stuff. But yeah, we raise them and breed them all ourselves. So David, our heifers are all custom raised. Our our calves are raised at a neighbors and then they go to my father in-laws in Western Wisconsin where they are raised.. We start breeding at 425 days and preg rate over there runs in the upper 30s to 40 as well. OK, good, Chuck. Yeah, our our virgin heifers. Yeah, we’re we tail chalk daily at there. The the heifers are raised at my first cousin’s place. He’s he’s got a really nice freestall set up there for our for our heifers. Yeah, tail chalk daily and our services conception are are are right at two.It’s actually worse than our cows right now. Our our we’re right about 38% on preg rate on kind of lost there. But anyway, 38% on that and it’s going, it’s going pretty good. Like I said, everything’s sexed unless someone genomics or like by the 4th breeding and it’s beef breeding.But so that’s where we are. All right, Mike, right now our 21 day preg rate on our heifers is 49. We raise our heifers here at the dairy until about 6 months of age and then they go out to a western lot in Nebraska, all open housing dirt lot and they will get, most of them will get 2 services of sexed and then on to beef out there.OK, so let’s go. How about you guys describe your heifer breeding programs? Are you guys, you kind of, I think all of you kind of alluded to this. So sounds like you guys are doing mostly age based breeding. If you’re not weighing, maybe you can clarify that and what what kind of a program you’re using, any synchronization at all? Is anybody you know setting up with a timed AI or just estrus first and then clean up the timed AI? Why don’t we just talk about that? So I’ll start, Mike, I’m going to start with you.So ours is based on age. We start breeding heifers out there on 415 days. It is based off synchronization. We will they enroll out there, I believe two to three weeks they will get a prostaglandin shot before they would be eligible to breed. So there is some and they do use some cidr synchs after a few times called open and different things like that.How many chances they get to? four. So the nice thing about being out West is there’s a lot of Angus bulls out there. So we will go for up to four services AI and then they do have a bullpen, which is been surprisingly a good thing to get some animals pregnant back on the dairy. I don’t like to hear that, Mike, but that’s that’s fine if that’s what they do.OK, Jeff, we, I, I have the vet. We check them at about a year and two to make sure a they’re big enough and then B-I want to make sure they’re cycling OK and not cystic or something goofy before I start throwing expensive sexed semen at them. We will cidr synch if their intervals are off or something’s goofy or like they like they’re not cycling but five day cidr synch.We will do on the heifers if needed, but for the most part I’m breeding off the activity monitors and then they get 2 services sexed and then I’ll go service of conventional. And then we actually do with our pregnant heifers that are on pasture. We still do at the antique when I do have a bull. So if they get much more than two or three services, they’re going over with the bull to finish them off.So Dave, no, we do not have a synch program over because it’s my in laws. I do have some management involvement there, but there is no synch They get bred off a natural heat. If she doesn’t show a natural heat by like 430-435 days, the vet will check her and then they’ll give her a prostaglandin or whatever she needs from there.Yes, we breed off of as I said before, off of age. Chances are at that age she’s old enough, she’s big enough. If she’s not big enough, chances are she got culled out already because she’s a problem. Half her lung or something like that. We use 2 units of sexed and then we breed 3 units of conventional after that or if she is a beef candidate, then she gets 5 units of beef.If they’re not pregnant after 5 services, they get culled out. Great. Who did I miss? Chuck? I think I missed you. Right. Yeah. So we before they go into pre breeding pen there, we’ll give them some. We’ll give them a updated bovi-shield shot and some multivitamin. And then at we’ll wait until there are 390-395 days of milk or days old, pretty much almost 13 months old.And then then we’ll allow them to breed them. So really no presynching program on at all. We preg check every two weeks. I I go with with them with the vet up there. So I got pretty much hands on with my my heifers too. So it works really well if we, if they’re young, if they’re old enough and not bred, we will, we will start out with a prostaglandin shot and then two weeks later if we come back, if she didn’t get bred off that prostaglandin or something like that, we’ll usually put a a cidr in her.Most of them are all bred off of that, that first, either natural heat or prostaglandin. Like I said, if they’re if we do preg check heifers and they’re open, almost everyone will get a cidr and we’ll just keep checking and as they get, you know, I’ll go 4-3 units of sex semen, 4th unit, 4th unit is beef, sometimes 5-6.All depends on the heifer, how she looks and she’s getting too old or too big. Then we will DNB them and, and and beef them out. So that’s kind of our, that’s our route. OK, great. Angie, looks like there’s a question that has come in. Yes. One of the attendees asked when referring to the average days between one insemination to another, what are the days between services that you guys know average in cows? Yep, Yeah.So this would be kind of the average breeding interval and that’s going to depend on whether you’re kind of synch and resynch or whether you’re trying to catch cows in heat after the first breeding and breeding them. So do you guys know that you guys know that number, Dave, do you do you know what that number is? You know, so dairy comp does a you that’s a chart that that’s a report you can read.And so the vast majority are in that. I think it’s 18 to 24 days is what the chart says. The vast majority are in there because we do tail chalk and breed. We would do breed seven days a week. We are all in house breeding. The only thing that’s actually bred on time, on time is the first service. After that they see a cow standing in heat at 5:00 in the morning.She’ll get bred at say 2 in the afternoon or whenever they feel that she should be bred. So that’s how we manage that. So we breed every day. So our interval is, yeah, probably that 23-24 days. OK, Jeff. Most of them are in that 18 to 24 days. Like I said, I, I think like 30% of my breedings are actually off standing heat.So they’re coming off, coming off that first round of double ovsynch I’ll catch them in heat if I can. I mean, I don’t, I guess I don’t know offhand what the actual number is that make it to the next check that’s open. They got to be resynched. But if I can, I’m shooting for that 18 to 24 days.OK, Mike, I’m going to say ours is probably closer to that 30 days if you average the the standing heat repeats versus the cows that are checked open and going to resynch. So I’m going to guess it’s probably closer to around that 30 when you average the two. Yep. Chuck. Yeah, I really don’t know that number either.I’ll admit I don’t, you know, everything’s, everything’s synchronized at our dairy. So when, you know, I preg check, open, restart, you know, or whatever breed, you know, obviously we we watched Day’s last heat very close in the virgin heifer pen, you know, to, to know when or how soon we’re going to, you know, breed again or if we need to breed again.But yeah, I apologize. I really don’t know that number. OK. Yeah, it’s a hard, it’s a hard call because, yeah, after first service. It depends on when you’re trying to catch them in heat, what percent you catch in heat versus the ones that go to the open, go to the open check. OK, so I’m going to ask a question about a number that you may or may not know off the top of your head, but people people are talking about what they call the heifer completion rate nowadays.So this would be of heifer calves born alive. What percent of those heifers get pregnant, calve and start a first lactation? You guys know that number? Let’s see, Jeff, I’m not 100% sure I’m going to tell you the right number, but I think that’s 91% is what I’m seeing. I don’t know if that’s right, but I know I need six to seven a month.So I’m taking quite a few. If I’ve got any extras for the months and they’re getting culled out of the calf barn into the steer shed. So my number might be higher than others, but I’m taking anybody with a lower net parent net merit score or if they hadn’t struggled with lung scores or something in the calf barn, they’re going to the steer shed.So my completion rate might not be as good as others, but I think if I looked right in the computer was 91%. Dave yes, that’s the number I track every month as well. So we’re at 4.8% loss. So 95.2% if she’s born alive, make it to the calving string, go to the milking string. Excuse me. OK, so 95, yeah, our, our death loss on the calves and heifers are in general are very, very small.So yeah, we, we’d be right around at 92 to 94% too. I mean it, it’s a really good heifer program going on and we pay good attention to them. We, we just know how important it is to keep our, keep our animals alive and keep going. And so we, they’ve been doing a really good job with that. OK, Mike, we are sitting in the high 80s by the time we transition them to out West and some if you don’t breed out there we’re we’re closing in on that high 80s to 90% completion rate.OK. So you guys this time is flying that always happens when you’re talking about repro, right. So time time is flown by. We only have a few minutes left. So I just have a couple questions. The one question I want to ask is embryo transfer, if any of you considered embryo transfer, are you using embryo transfer? Have you dabbled in it? Have you done it and got away from it? Just let’s just go around and I just want to see what you guys think.Mike, let’s start with you. We have talked about it. 1 little interesting thing. We had a beef company actually that wanted to work with us in placing beef embryos in some of our lower genetic Holstein cows here. So we did, I want to say we put like maybe 20 or 30 embryos. We did a trial a couple years ago with them and just to see how it would go.We did have honestly majority of them were open at, at the first preg check and we did have a couple abort. So we just, we’ve just decided that with the negative things that come along with ET, we’re just kind of staying away from it right now. OK, Jeff. We’ve just done a few nicer registered cows over the years.So not enough to really make a difference. But I guess we’ve just yet flushed a couple cows and put it in some heifers. But that’s been a year or two since I’ve even done that. So I can’t say I have enough data to know anything if I want to keep doing it. But we haven’t been, Dave. We do not.We’ve been approached by a number of people or companies to put embryos in. Just scares me. I have a really, really hard time having a cow go through a heat, not servicing her, not breeding her. And then all of a sudden the ET vet comes through and says, oh, something doesn’t look like we’re going to skip over or pass over.And now she’s open, open and she’s been open too long. I just have a hard time. I, there’s a lot of neighbors here that do it. I have brothers that do a lot of embryo work and they they have success with it. I just have a hard time pulling the trigger. I’m not ready to do it yet. OK, Chuck, Yeah, I dabbled in it 2-3 years ago.My own heifers, my highest genomic heifers. I would, you know, obviously I’d, I’d breed them with really high young genomic sexed semen bull and, and didn’t have the best of luck. The the protocol was tough, you know, lot of lot of administration of shots and, and, and one heifer we do pretty good.We get, you know, 5-10 eggs out. The next one we get 2. We’d screw around, put them in the animals and then I have to run up to the heifer farm because I’d put them all in the heifers. It was, it was a lot of running around and that. And after a while we just said, you know, and we got some very good cattle or good cows out of out of the ones that actually did survive and came through and freshened.But in the long run, I guess I would just as soon buy the best young high genomic semen I can buy. And maybe I’m spend a little bit more on the semen that I’m putting in my heifers. But I’d rather do it that way than through an ET program. Also been approached by a lot of companies that like to come in and put put them in the heifers and stuff like that.I’m not right there and I’m not one to make my heifer grower be there when all the ET work gets done. So kind of like what Dave said, we’re we’re putting a lot of that other stuff in other people’s hands and in the long run we’re just, it just doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t fit for us right now, maybe in the future.OK, last question, we’re getting up against the hour here. I want you to think about you guys all have excellent reproduction. You’re all in very high, high stratospheric kind of preg rates. So here’s the question. What has been the biggest benefit of good reproduction for your operation? What is that? What is that primarily brought to you as far as as far as running a dairy farm? And I’m going to start with Mike.I think more milk, honestly just more lactations, cow spending more time in peak milk, higher milk. You know, you talk about the high fertility cycle and I think that is just one of the things that takes a dairy to the next level when you can constantly have good transition and cows with good body condition scores that breed back quicker and are able to produce another calf and produce more milk.I mean, that’s that’s just made a world of difference here. The last, I would say five to seven years. Great, Dave. Yeah, I would agree 100%. More milk, you know, we breed later, a longer voluntary waiting period because we know we’re going to, we’re pretty confident we’re going to get her pregnant so we can wait longer.Remember we talked about 20 years ago, you couldn’t get nothing pregnant. So you start breeding up cows at 30-40 days. The holy smokes, things have changed. So the voluntary waiting period makes a big difference. And you know you’re getting cows pregnant, so she’s going to stick around. So old cows equals more milk as well.And old cows are paid for, so more profitability. I’m in this to make money, make no mistake about it. And the more money, the the longer we keep cows around, the more money we make. Read Jeff like he had mentioned before about the high fertility cycle. Advantage is definitely more milk the 1st. When we first improved our fertility one of the big advantages is we had way too many heifers and I don’t know if that was an advantage or not.I sold a lot of replacements. I don’t think I made much money selling replacements, but now with good repro, we’re really trying to raise as many beef cross steers as we can. It’s kind of become a milking beef herd the last couple years. So that’s kind of what is a real good advantage of getting cows pregnant and getting a lot of calves.So thank you, Chuck. Yeah. Just just good reproduction brings you less cows that are going to get in their late lactation and open, you know, every uterus on the farm is so important now with what the value of a beef calf is now, you know, good milk production, you know, less days in milk. It’s just all you’re just getting more milk and and a healthier herd.And for us, you know, better reproduction, it allows me to sell more dairy cows. And and yeah, it’s kind of a niche market right now. And I understand what Jeff was saying, that there was times when I was selling dairy cows for not much profit, but right now it’s been a really good profit. And every, like I said, every having every uterus and having a beef calf in her.I mean, now we’re trying to, you know, these late lactation cows that maybe ain’t milking so hot. You know what used to be just an easy cull, cow, because you had so, so good reproduction, you had plenty of cows. Well, some of them are kind of keeping othem around because we got that $800 beef calf in her.So like I said, every cow is different, but reproduction really opens good reproduction really opens up your business to to to more profit. All right, you guys, I just on behalf of UW Extension myself, I want to just thank you guys for taking the time to to do this. It’s really interesting to see what you guys are doing and congratulations to all of you.It sounds like you’ve got really good repro. You know, that’s that’s a change that I’ve seen in my career. It was the complaint that just give me a way to get my cows pregnant. Now we’re doing it really well. So I think that’s improved everyone. So I’m going to go ahead and turn this back to Angie and Jackie to kind of send us home for lunch.Yes, thank you everyone for joining. Just an outstanding conversation that we all had this morning. And we’re going to be posting the result, the recording of this webinar and conversation on the topic Hub on our website. So just appreciate all the conversations and the questions. It was a lot of fun today.Thanks a bunch.