The Dairy Cattle Reproduction Council (DCRC) brought producers, academia and industry experts together for discussions, presentations and panels Nov. 12-14 at the 2024 annual meeting in Arlington, Texas. Topics ranged from embryo viability and fertility traits to systemic inflammation, sustainability efforts, beef-on-dairy trends and highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) updates to genomic testing and more. Attendees actively participated in several breakout sessions offered, posing questions to research presented and engaging with one another.
Preconference sessions began Tuesday afternoon, with discussions on gender-sorted semen and managing reproduction with automation. DCRC President Tracy Burnett welcomed guests to Texas during her opening remarks Wednesday morning and introduced keynote speaker Christine Baes from the University of Guelph. Baes gave an overview of work being done on the Resilient Dairy Genome Project. (For a deeper dive into this discussion, read Changing headlines: Effort by Canadian dairy industry to create resilient cows.) Burnett also reported that DCRC is in a healthy financial standing before giving her retiring remarks and introducing the 2025 president, Ralph Bruno, dairy technical service veterinarian at Zoetis.
Predicting pregnancy loss
Ky Pohler from Texas A&M University addressed a crowded room as he discussed his research on embryonic viability.
“I don’t look at a pregnant cow and say, 'What are the odds she maintains this pregnancy?' I say, 'What are the odds she loses this pregnancy?'” he said. Pohler dove into the rapid changes of the uterus and conceptus during early pregnancy, noting his findings surrounding low pregnancy-associated glycoproteins (PAGs) and their correlation to pregnancy loss. He discussed the impact that accurately predicting pregnancy loss could have on the dairy industry and acknowledged there are current technological challenges that have to be addressed before accurate predictions can be made.
The future of DPR
John Cole of the Council for Dairy Cattle Breeding posed a question to listeners during his presentation on fertility traits: Is Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR) an outdated trait?
“DPR is the fertility trait that’s been used the longest,” Cole said. “It was first published in 2004 and is basically a measure of days open. It’s become challenging to work with DPR in the U.S. because of changes in management on farms. DPR assumes a fixed voluntary waiting period that was reasonable 20 years ago, but that’s not how farms manage their cows today.”
Cole introduced First Service to Conception (FSC) as a new trait scheduled to be included in genetic evaluations next year.
“This interval is not sensitive to management practices, such as different VWPs,” Cole said. “We don’t have to worry about when they start breeding; we’re looking at once you start breeding a cow, how long does it take for her to have a confirmed pregnancy?”
Cole’s presentation also explained the importance of utilizing selection indexes as they are intended instead of unintentionally individual culling.
“Folks will say something to their semen salesperson like ‘I want to see a list of bulls that are at least +1200 $NM, +1000 milk and maybe four other things,'" he said. "Guess what you’ve just done? You’ve just invented your own selection index that’s not doing what you think it is.”
A look at HPAI
Colorado State University’s Jason Lombard shared his experiences with HPAI.
“Every day I learn less and less about this virus,” Lombard shared with attendees during Wednesday afternoon’s general session. Giving a brief history of the virus, he also explained how his team at CSU’s AgNext has observed the virus in different herds, noting that some symptoms like nasal discharge hit herds harder than others. Lombard posed several questions about the effects of HPAI: How might udder scar tissue, reproductive health and somatic cell counts of infected cows be affected in the next lactation?
Data is king
A panel featuring Cole, Sarah Anderson with SenseHub Dairy Monitoring and Alex Scanavez of Alta Genetics rounded out Wednesday’s sessions as they discussed using technology and data use on dairies. Ben Voelz with STgenetics moderated questions from the audience, which included inquiries about how data can be standardized between automated monitoring systems and companies, what data should be collected and which professionals should be digesting data for producers. The panel also fielded questions surrounding what dairy technology will look like in the coming years and what the future of dairy databases might be. Panelists agreed that determining which data to mine and how to utilize it effectively will foster productivity across the industry.
Bringing the beef
Casey Anderson of STgenetics and Kyle Kunz of Lone Star Calf Ranch addressed questions from attendees surrounding the beef-on-dairy market Thursday morning. Both Anderson and Kunz agreed that the quality of beef-on-dairy animals has improved significantly in the past five years and noted that marketing these animals is well worth the extra time it might take.
“The beef world will find any excuse to discount an animal,” Kunz said, encouraging listeners to treat crossbred animals like native dairy animals as day-olds.
A focus on heifers
Paul Fricke of the University of Wisconsin – Madison presented his research on reinsemination management strategies. Michael Overton, global precision dairy data lead at Zoetis, discussed management of replacement heifers. Both were asked questions about heifer reproduction management.
“Heifers are the weak link when it comes to reproduction,” Fricke said. “We’ve got it down with cows. Next year we’ll be talking about heifers.”
Overton’s data showed that dairy producers stand to make more milk by targeting an ideal weight at first calving and noted that a spike in reproductive performance might also occur.
DCRC’s next annual meeting will be held in Middleton, Wisconsin, Nov. 11-13, 2025.
