When I stop at a farm for an assessment of the heifer program, the first thing I usually do is ask three questions

After the U.S. dairy industry experienced years of declining fertility in our cows, the trend finally turned around by the early 2000s

Timely breeding of replacements has long been a goal of competitive dairy producers in order to limit overall days on feed

Dairy heifers weighing over 500 pounds — a proxy for the number of dairy replacements expected to enter the U.S. milking herd over the next year — have fallen almost 15% during the past six...

Let’s talk about first-calf heifers, or, as I like to call them, first-calf velociraptors

Breeding heifers to calve in around 2 years old puts them on a productive track to begin paying off the costs of their rearing and avoid mounting up additional expenses while they remain open

Sometimes on the farm, I just need a bit of good news. For those of you who dairy or have in the past, you know what I mean. A little pick-me-up of good news just hits the spot

Diarrhea remains a common challenge on dairy farms and calf raising operations around the world. This challenge is also costly. At the University of Guelph, we recently completed a study that eva

One of the three largest expenses on a dairy farm is raising replacements, and the greatest cost in that category is the feed it takes to get a heifer from birth to first lactation

Record high feed costs and milk values are challenging traditional thoughts on feed and milk economics. Even though feed costs keep going up and up

When it comes to raising heifers, we don’t want them to grow too slowly – or too fast

Animals can get themselves into tricky situations that require fast thinking and careful maneuvering to remedy

Our busiest time of year is just kicking off

January 2022 was the third straight month that U.S. milk production declined — milk pounds down 1.6% compared to last year represented the largest year-over-year loss in nearly 18 years

A relatively new trend in calf raising is feeding transition milk to calves in early life. Dairy producers have long understood the importance of quickly providing newborn calves with colostrum

Scours is one of the most common calfhood illnesses, and it remains a widespread issue on farms. According to the Dairy Calf and Heifer Association’s Gold Standards, farms should aim for less than...

Without naming names, you can probably think of a sports team that’s been down on its luck recently (or longer). Fans or the media may give them a bit of a break

Heifers can do very well when raised in freestalls, and the overall footprint and bedding requirements of a freestall barn is often smaller than that of loose housing

When feeding heifers, Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Betsy Hicks has four main goals:1. Maintain health2. Achieve rate of average daily gain targets3