The Future Dairy Herd: Fewer Cows, Higher Responsibility - Featuring Experts from Diamond V

Over the next several years, the dairy industry will face a tightening supply of replacement heifers. As fewer animals enter the system, the success of a dairy operation will increasingly depend on how well it can protect the health and productivity of the cows already in the herd.

On this episode, listeners will gain insight into why a stronger focus on prevention, resilience and whole-cow health is becoming essential in dairy operations, and how proactive strategies can help dairy operations be better stewards of their animals, while sustaining performance in a herd with fewer replacements.

This episode features experts from Diamond V, including Dr. Gavin Staley, a recognized thought leader in the U.S. Dairy Industry with more than 20 years of experience in veterinary practice and technical services. His expertise spans dairy record evaluation, heifer maturity and productive life, with a strong focus on preventative strategies that support long-term cow health and performance.

Dr. Gavin Staley examines what this shift means for today’s dairy herds and the professionals who support them. Exploring how keeping cows longer changes health risk, performance expectations and management priorities, as well as why extending lifespan only works when cows remain healthy and productive.

This episode is eligible for ARPAS continuing education credits.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Let's get started.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Kevin Larson and I'm part of the Diamond V team here in North America. And one thing we want to share today due to the growth of our next generation technologies in several global markets and the need for a brand name that we can use globally, we're renaming uh Nutretech to Diamond V dairy Field and NatureSafe to Diamond V beef field. The products are not changing, just the names. The field reflects what the product does. It supports digestive health and immune resilience so cattle can better handle stress and stay productive. There are no changes to formulation, feeding rates, or performance. And our team is here to support as they always have. Nothing changes there. So thank you for your trust, for the trust in our products. Your partnership has helped shape what these products are today. And it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Gavin Staley. Dr. Staley is a recognized, very recognized thought leader in the U.S. dairy industry with more than 40 years of experience in veterinary practice and technical services. His expertise spans dairy record analysis, heifer maturity, and productive life with a strong focus on preventative strategies that support long-term cow health and performance.

unknown 2:07

Dr.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Staley, take it away.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

Good afternoon, everyone. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. Many of you will remember back in 2000, a Hollywood film came out, The Perfect Storm. It was based on the loss of a shipping vessel at sea, the Andrea Gale. And uh it was lost in an unusual Northeaster in that uh a couple of things came together. It was a Northeaster that picked up a cold front, an Arctic cold front, and then Hurricane Nancy joined to create a very unusual storm. And uh it was known, as I said, as the perfect storm. Now, the dairy industry finds itself in something of a perfect storm as well, right now. A couple of unusual things have come together, and the question really is is this the new normal? So let's just step back and have a look at what's gone on over the years. So the US national beef herd is the lowest it's been in 65 years, driven by droughts, driven by aging rancher populations and less sustainability. So that has created a shortage on the feeder market, and that has resulted in unprecedented value of beef cross caps, the so-called black calves. So dairy, in a way, has become like the new quasi-cal calf operation. We've also seen unprecedented use of beef on dairy and sex semen. Many of you remember when sex semen first came out, how novel, and and uh we had no idea how impactful that would all be. And this has all resulted in a very unusual situation. Very low heifer inventories. The USDA numbers tell us that 2.5 million are expected to calve in 2026. This is the lowest in 48 years, and on top of that, we now have the highest US dairy herd, 9.6 million. So we have some really big changes, big sweeping changes in the industry. Now, some of you might be thinking, no, hang on, 9.6 million, isn't that driven by the value of the uterus, what's inside the little black caps? So people are hanging on to cows that normally would have left. And that is true. Uh, we're hearing about it, it's been recognized. So that 9.6 is is higher than probably real. But even if you took 300,000 off that, it's still gonna not change too much. So, what does this mean for the industry? If you look at the 2.5 over 9. Call it 9.3 if you like, it results or the math, the simple maths, is a very low replacement rate. In fact, less than 30, and if the numbers are real or close to real, it's about 26 percent. Unprecedented numbers. So, very simply, this means we're gonna have more lactation seven and eight, which are higher maintenance cows, we're gonna have longer lifespans. But I want to make this point low replacement and culling rates are earned. You don't just turn a switch, and there we are, we're gonna have a low replacement rate. We can get into all kinds of trouble if we're not in a good position. So, this heifer decline story, which I just mentioned, has been going on for quite a while. This is 2019. This is the uh the heifer inventory. Look at it just going down on a certain dairy. There's the milking cows in blue industry picked up on it. There was 2023. So a couple of years back already, there was hey, the supplies were shrinking. So this is this is real, even if the numbers aren't exactly right. This is a real trend. And uh a colleague put this together. Look at this is amazing. If you look at um, you know, we're looking at the total number of heifers back 1970. Look how it just decreases, and then it falls off a cliff, somewhere about your beef on dairy readily go gets going, and we go from 4.6 down to 3.9. So some of you might be thinking, hang on, where did you get this 2.5 from? Well, 3.9 is the total number of heifers. The actual number of heifers expected to calve is 64% of that or thereabouts, which gets us to our number. So you can see this is really dramatic. Let's have a quick look at some of the factors that influence longevity, lifespan, productive life, whatever we want to call it, longer-lived cows. Albert DeVries pointed out five key factors: the calf value, aged cow cost, macro maturity, herd replacement, genetic opportunity. Put them on this this uh graph here, and very simply it's this. So um high culling or replacement rates, um, low number of average lactations there on the bottom. As we get older herds, various things change. So, what I want to point out here is two things. That blue piece there is what these young high turnover herds miss. It's called the calf battle opportunity cost. You could put black calf in there, so they they can't do much of that because they have such a turnover of animals. We have fewer of these dairies today. We are drifting over here. The next one is the pink. The pink is the aged cow cost. That's that maintenance, the high maintenance I was talking about. These older cows have issues, so we're kind of caught in a bit of a situation here, aren't we? Because we got this increasing, this uh heifer black calf thing is driving it, and um there we go. Now remember, oh, when sex semen first came out years ago, um, you could basically any herd you can you can describe as some kind of a triangle pyramid uh with the different lactation groups. Um, this is meant to be one, actually, one, two, three, four. There we go. There used to be a lot of animals in the bottom, 45-50 percent, because we had all those heifers. Remember those days? Well, we moved away from that, and we got to a more sustainable. This is a sort of the productive life story, if you like, like. This is a lactation tree over here, and uh, we got down to maybe 35 ones, and up we went. We had more five and sixes. These are really, really valuable animals. I call them the golden girls. So we sort of got to that part of the equation, it's a good place to be. Here's the important piece, too. If you look at lactations by one, you see one is red, blue is is two, then you've got three, four, five. Well, five and six are the green and yellow. Why am I showing this? Why is it important? You notice that these five and sixes are starting to drop off. They're still doing pretty well, but dropping off. Well, here's the real issue. When you get to seven and eights, it's all over the show, not many animals there, but they really are not doing well and should be, should have left the herd, probably. So seven and eights are very hard to keep around. That's the point. Now, you might be also thinking, hang on, those are USDA numbers. What's actually happening in the field? Well, I just pulled up three graphs, um, or tables actually from herds that I've looked at just last month, and I'm seeing things I haven't seen ever, which is very low L1s. In fact, the same as L2s. So this is a new thing. This should have been higher. This is lower than L2s, this is lower. So, what does this tell us? That the replacement rates are are lower than traditionally in these herds. Now, if we continue with this 26% replacement rate, certain things are gonna happen. One of them is we need more seven and eights, but we have virtually nothing. 31 cows and 4,000 cow herds 90 odd in the 4,000, not many, barely makes a percent. So, why is that all important? Well, let's just do some maths. Let's start off with that 26 at the bottom, and then for simplicity, we will just each year take off 26% cutting, because in a normal stable situation, the replacement rate should equal the culling rate should equal your L1s. So all these three should be the same. So there we are, and there we go, up we go, just do the maths. Uh rounded, I rounded off some of these, but it'd be in the ballpark. Here's what I want you to notice. You get at the end of six lactation six, you get to 86 cows. That means if we're gonna have 100 cows and we want to keep our numbers stable, we have to fill in the top of this tree. So it's not a Christmas tree anymore, it's more like a fir tree, a rocket fur that goes straight up. There's a problem with that. We just showed you can't keep these animals around. These are quite hard to keep around, even 14% is hard. So, what's going to happen? We're either going to keep animals that should have gone, or the herd's gonna contract. If this number is sustained for a couple of years, like each year, we we're putting in the low number, then you get this picture. Now it's possible that herd might just have one low year and and uh suddenly bring in the whole bunch of heifers the next year, 40% or something, then you're gonna have this little divot in the tree that'll work its way all the way up. But if if this is sustained, it becomes a very big problem. The tree becomes narrow, and ultimately uh you're gonna lose cows, they just won't be there. Now, the important thing is this low heifer number has been here for a couple of years already. If you think back to that graph I showed you, and looking at the NAAB numbers, it doesn't look like it's dramatically improved. There's some suggestions that it might change next year, but uh the ver the jury is out, we're not sure. So, point is this is not easily achievable, and frankly, dairies are gonna run out of cows. I want to also say the following: this is not true for everybody. So, there's some dairies I'm looking at that have got a lot of heifers in the pipeline, they are sitting very pretty happy to be told that heifers are gonna be very valuable. Other geographies, it's a it's a conversation point all the time. So this is not equal across the country, and that's important to know, not everybody's gonna be affected by this, but a lot of people are. So let's talk a little bit here about um the four horsemen of the apocalypse because this all comes down to ultimately keeping cows healthier for longer. If you look at the reasons animals leave, so that's just argument's sake, say late lactation cults, and um we look at the four things that um typically um remove animals transition, mastitis, lameness, and repro. And you could put production stroke repro. I want to also make this point. Um heat stress could be the honorary fifth horseman. Heat stress is gonna be really, really important on these um older cows, they are more vulnerable to it. But point is we have call them the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Uh, nice, easy to remember. They're the reason we have fewer golden girls, and we're gonna need more golden girls. We are going to need to keep cows healthier for longer. I like to say it's taming the horsemen. Every dairy has all the horsemen, just various percentages. If you're in the Pacific Northwest, it's mass status is your main horsemen. Other other geographies, it's it's other things, heat stress, for example. And I want to go further and say this is all about prevention. Once we have those horsemen well entrenched, it's too late. We've got to go back and reduce the incidence prevalence of these diseases. And it's really about innate immunity. If you think about virtually everything that affects these cows is touched by or touches the immune system. A little while back, um, a guy called Dr. Peter Tia wrote a book called Outlive. I've read it, really interesting, lots of parallels with what we're talking about. He brought in this new idea of health spans. Not good enough to just extend your lifespan. You also got to be healthy for longer while you're aging. So, health span, that's the narrative I think we need to be moving this thing towards. Uh, not just lifespan or productive life or something else, just health span. There are four horsemen in the in the human world, he listed them. There are four horsemen, as you just heard, in the dairy world. So, what will this new normal look like on the dairy? I spent a bit of time just writing down as they came to mind things that we're likely to see as herds age. As herds age for those herds that are impacted by this. What are we what can we expect to see? You may disagree with some of these, that's fine. I'm just putting them up here anyway. Uh, there are quite a few of them, uh, and nothing really good, to be honest. I mean, that black calf comes at a cost. So let's start off. Herd bulk tank somatic cells will likely rise, maybe 50 to 80,000, depends on how many of these older cows, but it's very easy. Go look at your your somatic cell counts on your cows. Most of the the problems are older cows. We'll have more repeat mastitis cases. Why? Because we're also hanging on to some of these cows because we have to. So that's not good. More cows in the hospital, more transition disease, both clinical and subclinical. Why? Because older cows are more prone to it. Just think milk fever. Who gets milk fever? We're gonna be ready, have to be a lot smarter at picking up some of these transition diseases because many of them are subclinical. Right? The clinical stuff's maybe easy, it's a subclinical stuff. A lot of research done by a lot of smart people on identifying subclinical disease. So there'll have to be more hospital crew training, and we might have to get other technologies to help identify them. Point number five, lower reproductive efficiency. Old cows are not as good at getting pregnant, both heat detection and conception rate. So some of the heat detections driven by the higher milk production, um, but you know, there's a lot of subclinical endometritis as well, so the conception rate goes down. So those lovely big high preg rates are maybe going to come under pressure. The use of sex semen will need to be expanded into the actual lactating herds because the heifer numbers will be too low to supply the required numbers of heifers. Just think about that for a so most of the sex semen goes into virgin heifers, some into L1s, maybe some into L2s. I don't know how much is gonna have to go up the tree, but we're gonna have to use quite a bit more to get our numbers. And sex semen and older cows, also not a happy marriage. Point number seven ties to what I said earlier. Mature cows show less and lower intensity heats. So we're gonna, you know, we we might have to move into some of these uh activity monitor systems, and we're gonna certainly need a robust resync program. Say that again, dairies are gonna really need the good old traditional robust resync program to pick up those cows because otherwise they'll just disappear. Heat abatement will be very important. So, and we see it more and more. The planet is is is getting warmer for whatever reason. We we can debate, but heat abatement across the world is is really really important. Biosecurity will be more important too. We saw with the HPAI that it impacted the mature cows more, so they were the animals that tended to leave the herds. So biosecurity is gonna be important, really important. We're gonna have to focus on heifer health more than ever. Heifers are gonna become even more valuable, they're already very valuable, but who knows how much more if you can't get them. So we're gonna have to really focus on the quality of these animals. Um, no more Darwin heifers, we've got to have like no heifer left behind. Everyone is super valuable. Now, here's a debatable one. If we are very short of heifers, genomic testing is less useful because we just don't have enough to go around to test because we need everybody. If the dairy has excess heifers, genomic testing will be very valuable because we have the chance now to remove the less productive, the poorer genetic animals. So if you if you're shy of animals, anything with four legs you're gonna keep. If you've got excess, genetic testing already set you apart. Calf security may be an issue. I thought of that too. You know, if these things are so valuable that they're old, they might just get legs that you don't want. We may need to increase hoof trimming because there'll be more lame cows, and we've got to keep those girls on their legs longer. And here's something that popped up. If we have lower reproductive efficiency, we might start seeing those butter balls again, overconditioned cows, something we haven't seen for a long time, really, because of the system we have. But if we have more of these uh longer lactation animals, I could very easily see us running into overconditioned cows again, ketosis, fatty liver, all that stuff. Herds will need to keep milk testing cows. So some berries have moved away from that using other uh meters and so forth, and and even some are not testing at all. But here's the problem how do you identify high somatic cell cows if you don't test? Now, there are some inline systems, you need something because if you start running into these really high somatic cells, let's say three, four hundred thousand with these older cows, and maybe even some problems, perhaps some staph aureus or something, you're gonna have to have a way of of um of testing. And so culturing, next point, will be crucial. Most dairies do that anyway, but staph aureus and things like Proteca might become really, really important. Cow monitoring, I think, is gonna be uh crucial too, you know. Activity monitors, eye in the sky cameras, all these new techs are actually going to find a place because they'll be able to pick up some of these cows earlier, and we're gonna need to pick them up. 18. I think cutting is gonna be a lot more difficult. The algorithms that we typically had are going to be. Stretched and challenged. And already we're seeing it. Right? So those high numbers of animals, late days and not carrying a black calf, they were do not breeds. They were animals that would have left. And now they're staying. And if you're short on heifers and they calf down, chances are she's going to stay again. So how do are we going to do this? There's room for somebody to really get clever about helping the industry. And point number 19, which is the one really the one that scares, um, should scare all of us, is that dairies are gonna run out of cows, frankly. And the point is this, too, is we're not gonna get replacements from south of the border because of New World Screw, and we're not gonna get them from north of the border much to make it up what is needed. 26% uh replacement rate is unheard of, super, super difficult. All of these points are gonna make daring harder, I think. And we we're gonna have to do some of these things I mentioned to give us a better chance of improving the health span. Because a low cull rate, you can put replacement rate, because it's all kind of the same, it's earned. So we need to shift the narrative from lifespan to health span because we are definitely increasing the lifespan, but it's not so smart if it's not also some health span. Let's just have a quick look around the world to see what's happened in other geographies. So, you know, all of us probably think immediately the Netherlands with their phosphate quota, you know, there it is, average productive life that's in years, the 3.7 years. I mean, there are a lot of older cows there for sure, and then we are down here, which is more like 2.3 um lactations, uh, which is they're which always less than the the age. Um, but you know, it hasn't turned out very well for the Dutch. This just came out um February 2026, a paper looking at the extending cow lifespan in Dutch dairy farms, looking at characteristics and so forth. And very briefly, these 3.7 herds were small, low-producing. I'm talking like very low, 65 pounds. They the dairyman said they had to spend more time with the cows, and on top of that, they were on pasture for six hours. So we can't here in the US on confinement dairies just say, Oh, we'll just age, age the herds like the Dutch do. It's not gonna work. No shape, no version of reality will that work. So we have to do something different. So, what's the solution? I want to turn our attention here. I had this idea, you know, the elite herds, and they are, and they're they've been here for a while, the elite herds. What are they? The you know, the hundred-pound herd, the seven-pound components, if you're north of the border, two kilograms of milk fat. And just about anywhere in the world, they want 45 liters of milk. So China doesn't matter where, 45 liters. These herds have been getting some of this right for a long time. Firstly, and I'm gonna make two points here. They got this heifer thing right. I call them platinum heifers, maturity and health, and health, and then they were able to create and retain more of these healthy mature cows, golden girls. That's this health span message. So, in a way, as we look at the future, we need to be looking at these guys who lead the charge. What are you doing differently? Uh, that you're able to be at the 30% replacement rate and been there for a while. And frankly, they do a lot of things right, all of the above or below, to make this happen. So let's take a look at this again. Back to this point, it's earned, right? These guys earned it. A low replacement rate should be the outcome, not the destination. It should be what happens because you do everything right. Here's a herd, an example of an elite herd. This is a guy who, you know, a dairy that can play in this uh arena. There's 3,500 cows, 30% L1s, right? So he's right down there, not too intimidated by 28, I'm sure. And uh, you know, no shortage of milk here. So a lot of um he's really getting this right. I I love this one, cow 1525, an invisible cow, right? 86,000 liters uh of lifetime, four event cows, some people call them invisible cows. They're just there, they're doing their job. She's a six-lakation, there she is, right there. And she just, you know, she calves, she gets bred, she gets pregnant, she drives off, rinse and repeat, right? We want more of these girls. And I want to say this too. I think something that's changed is this health story. Uh, you know, the genetics, health, health traits are gonna be a very, very big deal going forward because these girls are gonna have the right legs, right other characteristics uh to hang around. Big change from where we were before we had the genome. The heifer part of it, don't forget that, and some of you might have heard me talk about this and say, hang on, we heard all this before. Platinum heifers, super, super important. Why? Because what you do with your heifers determines what you're gonna what your herd's gonna how it's gonna perform. So lactation one at 10 weeks approximates your herd average annual milk. So that's important because we we need these elite animals to come into the herd and then stay, and then stay. And a little bit more about that now. So this is the big question: how many heifers do you actually need? Now it's easy. Here's the formula right there. Twice the herd size, multiplied by the cull rate, multiplied by the age at first calving, divided by 24 times by one plus the non-completion rate as a decimal. So you just plug that in. Two important things that piece, the cull rate. What I said, you got to earn it, right? So, guys that earned it, that are capable of doing it, they can put a low number in there. You also got to keep these animals alive and not just alive, thriving, because we can have those chronic pneumonia cases that should have gone and we hang on to them because we need them, so apparently. But these are the two big drivers, and this is a discussion that should be had on every dairy. I believe every dairy has a Goldilocks range of replacements, stroke culls. Yeah, are you a 25 to 30 dairy? Are you a 30 to 35? Are you a 35 to 40, or are you over 40? And whatever you are, whatever your consultants and yourself agree, that's your number. That's the number of heifers you need to uh create. After that, it's bonus, but don't be tempted into having fewer than you need. Non-completion, really important, it can be calculated. There's some um dairy commands, pipeline, right? What's in the pipeline? Really, really important. We do not want to be looking at numbers that suggest we got 30% cull rates or replacement rates. So, as I said earlier, Darwin heifers to no heifer left behind, or we will have not enough heifers at all. So, got to change the narrative a bit. Um, like I said earlier, this is really important too, that strong correlation between the week 10 milk and the average annual milk. And this is a graph I love, I've used it a lot. Um, again, production by age retreshing, i.e., maturity. So these animals at the top are more mature. Here's why I bring this up because who's likely to leave? This one, this one, or the top girls. Milk is protective. Dr. Petro used to always say that too back when. Milk is protective, right? So the higher producers tend to outperform, stay around longer. Also, the reproduction and the sold and diets first 60 days are higher for these immature animals. That's important. Remember, we're trying to keep more of these girls, not lose them, and we want them to reproduce. So maturity is really important. We need to revisit that. Make sure you don't have like low-grade immaturity uh lurking in your dairy. Um, it's just not worth it. The battleground, if you like, is gonna be around culling. I said it earlier, culling is gonna be super hard to do. We're gonna have to really dig in. I call a Pandora's box, gonna have to dig in and find why cows are leaving. Identify the leaks in the bucket, if you like. So you know, CAR tables, you can calculate numbers of cows, you can calculate you know cull rates, and when you know when they happened and for what, you know, uh the industry divides culling into two things voluntary and involuntary. Now, frankly, the only involuntary is dead. Anything else is voluntary, it's just the degrees of problems. But so the voluntary ones which have been listed here back by Penn State Extensions a few years ago, poor production, salt for replacements, aggressive temper must be an issue somewhere, not sure. Um, but many of what we would call voluntary are actually involuntary, I guess, because when do you sell an animal if she's multiple breed uh AIs? That's a voluntary discussion. Mastitis, how many cases or how many somatic cells, and for how long? Lameness, how many visits to the tremor? Injuries, respiratory. So these are called involuntary, but there's a mix, you can get the picture here. But again, here we are with some of the horsemen, right? So infertility, mastitis, lameness, injuries are often around um transition, respiratory is often around dermatitis, DA. So we got to dig in for each and every dairy and find out what are the main horsemen, and then figure out how we can tame them. Because if we can tame them, we can improve the health span. And we can push those three, four, five, maybe up to six, seven, a little bit, um, or eight. But back to the point I made earlier, too. It's very, very hard to have seven and eights. We have to get this bottom part of the tree right, which is bring in the appropriate number of heifers for your facility. It's very hard to try and correct it by making a you know a rocket fur out of a Christmas tree. It's not going to work easily. Why cows leave? Uh, there was a nice uh article here a little while back. Uh, a Swiss and Danish one looking at all the different diseases. There they were, and they put prices on them. And I put this in again just to show, you know what? It's the same old four horsemen, right? Ketosis, mastitis, lameness, matritis, cysts. Yonis showed up, of course. That's a problem in some areas. RPs, dystocia. So there we are. And as I said earlier, transition disease, more important in in for older cows. We do know when they leave. Um, 25% of them leave here, first 60 days. Um, now what I think we're gonna see more of uh possibly is this getting even bigger because some of these animals are gonna be calved in uh and then black calf harvested and then they're gone. So we just got to bear that in mind. This might already get maybe 30% as we harvest those late lactation black calf uterite girls. So I'm putting this up just to make the point, too, that we've got to dig in and figure out when cows are leaving and why. So here's another one we can look at um remarks were sold. Yellows is mastitis, we and the injuries are in there somewhat. So get down and dirty and figure out what what the herd needs. Summary let's bring it all together. Dairy dynamics have recently changed dramatically and unlikely to come back anytime soon, if we look at the projected number of cabs efforts, unlikely to change back soon, and also this idea that the national beef herd is going to suddenly reinvigorate itself, very unlikely unless droughts and a few other things change. Took 65 years to get uh, it's not about to go back anytime soon. The new normal will be a low replacement rate for cutting rate on many dairies. Many dairies. I say most, because if the US day is right, that's everybody. Uh, so that's 26 to 28 percent, which is, by the way, about 12% lower than the previous averages five years ago. This means if you do the maths, the average lactation on many dairy herds will have to increase to 2.7 lactations from 2.3. That's really hard. That's seven and eight. There you are. We need about 12% more older cows, seven plus. They're prone to all kinds of issues, hard to keep around. If the health of these animals does not improve, i.e., health span, and we use our normal culling protocols, the herd size will be will decrease. If we have the same rigor on culling on animals that deserve to be culled, that are hanging around, the herd size will decrease. Empty stalls. If the previous culling protocols are overridden, like manual override, right, because we need them, now we're gonna have more sixes and sevens, then the likelihood of broken, unproductive animals staying in the herd increases. This is true. I showed you some graphs, you can look at them on your dairies. Seven and eights are underperformance, usually, and never mind all the cow welfare issues that are gonna lurk there. Solution. What's the solution to our problem here? Firstly, we have to we have to bite the bullet and create a reasonable heifer inventory based on a rational culling rate for the dairy, the Goldilocks, culling stroke replacement. You say I use those interchangeably because they are in a stable herd, right? And we need to start that today. Even if we start that today on some of these dairies, it's gonna be too late, frankly. It's three years out. There's gonna be uh a lot of difficulty in those three years, but we need to get this right and then not deviate. We have to focus on this non-completion rate of heifers. We have to make platinum heifers fewer, we're gonna have fewer heifers for sure, but healthier heifers, highest genetic value animals. I want to also say this we should be using sex semen on some of these older cows because they have proven themselves in the herd. They might not have the best genetics. My opinion, and um others share it, is they they there for a reason, they did very well under those circumstances. We need more of their offspring. Then it comes down to this health span. We have to focus on preventative health measures, improving the chances of these girls actually making it. All about prevention. Gotta look at that very carefully. And this is the four horsemen and heat stress. Don't forget heat stress, revisit heat stress, and remember this a low culling rate is earned, increased productive life, i.e., health span, is an outcome, not a destination. It's earned and it's an outcome. With that, I would be happy to have some questions if you have it.

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Please feel free to put some questions in the chat.

SPEAKER_03 38:58

Okay. The question is: do you compare total heifers in development to heifers required when doing the calculation? How do you evaluate age groups? Yeah, so that's a good question. So if we go on um what the USDA is, the way they approach it, is how many animals are due to calve? And uh Jennifer, you you can actually look at the number of animals in each age segment to get a better calculation and see how many are actually gonna come through on that dairy. So you're not just doing like a big number, you can go down to the month. And here's the other important piece: there's a lot of seasonality. If you look at the heifer uh projected calvings, summer stress already changed that, right? So you've got to be look at the whole picture of when are we gonna get these slugs and what's our overall numbers? So, Dr.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

Aldrich.

SPEAKER_03 39:58

All right, what's the expectation for average milk? Okay, uh, and has that relationship changed? Um, so Dr. Aldrich, what I do is I don't use percentage. Uh percentage is is a little misleading, i.e., what is the percentage of milk over L2, for example? Because if you have an improvement in your L1s, better heifer raising, that percentage goes down. And then when those ones become two, that percentage goes up. So it's kind of a little bit of a misleading. There's a in my experience, based on looking at records, and I don't see it changing in black and white, there's a 30-pound difference between L1s and L2s at five weeks, 30 pounds, 13.6 kgs. So have a look at it that way, if you can pull those graphs. Um, in the stable herd, it's pretty dang close to to uh 30 30 uh pounds. That's how I do it. I don't use percentages. Ah, this is a good, really good question. In the tree, it looked like culling rate of 26 was applied similarly to each lactation. Is this is this what you observe in reality as well? No, I don't observe that. This was like a an easy way to fudge it a little bit, not misleading. Let me explain. So L1s usually have a lower cull rate, 20%. But higher lactations have a higher one, they're not 26, they're more like 35, 40. So I did this a couple of times, uh, and it works out very similarly. Um, so it's just put you can put and you can put in any numbers you like and the herds you work with, right? So maybe do a 20% with your ones, 30, 30, and then maybe 40 uh for your fives and sixes. You'll come out at a similar place. But good question.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

Very good. Man, we'll hand it back to you.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

Yeah, so thanks everyone for joining. Um, we'll send a follow-up email out and include uh Dr. Staley's information in case you have any other questions or want to reach out to him. But um thank you guys for all joining. We really appreciate it.