The author is the founder of DNMCmilk, which works with dairy producers and heifer growers in several regions of the U.S. and around the world.

My grandfather was a Dairy Herd Information Association (DHIA) milk tester in the 1930s in Alabama. He would make monthly rounds to dairies in western Alabama collecting data, including milk weights, breeding records, and even some feed information. All these years later, we are still talking about this same data.

I wonder what the discussions on his visits were like regarding the rations since that is my area of expertise. I expect there was a grain that was fed, maybe in number of scoops per cow that could be expressed as pounds. I am also assuming that forage intake was made up of lots of guessing. Fast forward a few decades and I bet these conversations between consultants and dairy producers were more detailed and feedstuffs were more accurately weighed and expressed in pounds of feed per cow per day. Another few decades later, the importance of knowing the dry matter percent of ingredients brought along the term dry matter intake (DMI).

For the last 20 or 30 years, every dairy producer has had the term dry matter intake roll off their tongue as naturally as if it was the only way to ask this important question: How much are they eating? This question must be answered in terms of DMI. As dairy people, we leave as-fed intake to the other species groups.

Dive deep on DMI

I have a new question in this query regarding pounds of DMI for a dairy farm, though. It is a more probing question that has much to say about how the highest milking cows are doing on a dairy: What is the DMI of the pen or group on your dairy that is eating the most feed?

Much of what we discuss in the finer details of a dairy farm revolve around averages. And yes, average DMI for your milking herd is important for both biology and economics. It is, after all, a big influence on your actual feed cost. Not the DMI at the bottom of the ration report from the nutritionists, but the actual one that will be correctly connected to the final feed dollars that exit the bank account.

Getting back to the important DMI level for the highest pen on the dairy — how can we use this information? I have been considering this question recently to assess milk production potential, feed conversion, body weight loss risk, and many other important factors on a high-performing dairy. If this article was focused on transition cow health, then the operative question would be the DMI of the prefresh and postfresh pens. While those two numbers will likely correlate with the overall success of the transition program, I think that the DMI of your highest intake pen has much to say about the status of overall milk production.

New norms

How these cows have changed in the past several years! I remember a number of years ago when I noticed that there were pens of cows in early to mid-lactation that were consuming over 60 pounds of DMI. It was during the period when the use of better on-farm feeding software was, for the first time, tracking actual DMI by pen. I assumed there had been pens on high-producing farms for a long time that had these higher intakes. But when low 50s average DMI was the norm on several of my clients’ herds, contemplating individual pens that were north of 60 pounds was something to ponder. Was this a good thing? After some investigation considering the milk flow in those pens, it was pretty easy to see that as long as manure was healthy and the diet was reasonably well-balanced, yes, these high intakes were good.

Soon after that, I remember starting to tell clients that if you didn’t have any pens eating more than 60 pounds DMI, you probably won’t be happy with your tank average.

Here in 2025, we might be setting some new standards of high levels of intake and I am back to asking myself, “Is this a good thing?” As I talk with clients on farm visits and map our walk through the pens armed with a DMI and energy-corrected milk (ECM) report, I always want to spend time in those peak DMI pens to be sure that manure, cud chewing, and body condition score (BCS) are all in good shape.

In the highest producing herds, intakes on these pens are currently over 65 pounds. And, yes, as long as the manure is healthy, it is a good thing. These pens are usually filled with cows that are moving from negative energy balance to even and then beginning the BCS recovery process. I see pens milking well over 120 pounds of ECM that are eating around 68 pounds of DMI. That is a feed conversion in excess of 1.80 to 1. If we had daily body weight measures on these peak milk and DMI cows, we could really dial in on the metabolic situation of these animals converting feed to milk with such success.

Doing more with less

So, why do these cows seem to be on the way up in DMI so quickly in recent years? I think the success in breeding and feeding cows with higher milk component potential is the driver. I don’t think cows are getting bigger, but instead they are making more milk solids year after year. Because of this, DMI must rise as well.

We can work to fine tune these diets such that every pound of additional intake creates milk at a higher efficiency.

As summer approaches, these intakes will drop. Keeping an eye on the ECM:DMI ratio will guide us while closely monitoring BCS and reproductive success. This will be the best path through heat stress. I have noted in dairies with good cow comfort that feed conversion might go up in the summer as cows eat less but will continue to milk a little better than expected. Looking closer at energy concepts like fatty acid balancing and starch rate dynamics can help get every last megacalorie of energy into the cows.

So, as you look at metrics that describe how your herd is doing, consider adding the DMI of your hungriest pen to the list of important items. It might even deserve a little square box on the whiteboard in the dairy office.