Defining Lactation

Defining Lactation

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
There are definite cycles of lactation in dairy cows that spike and then decrease gradually over time which ultimately necessitates a pregnancy. These cycles need to be monitored closely because, obviously, milk production is the key to a dairy's profitability. Here, with a closer look at the cycles and factors affecting them, is Dr. of veterinary medicine, Mike Lormore. "For an animalTo start a subsequent lactation, they have to become pregnant while they are also lactating in their first lactation. So for those aged animals, they will have a calf and then we will start to breed them again at about 60 days after they have had their previous calf so then only lactating, they are also becoming pregnant again and carrying a subsequent pregnancy as they go through that lactation cycle, we dry them off and they have the last 60 days of that second pregnancy before they calve again and we start the whole process over."

A 9% difference in pregnancy rate added up to a $143/cow/year difference in net farm income between the top one-third of herds and the bottom one-third of herds, 1,*  according to a study by Zoetis and Compeer Financial that analyzed 11 years of herd data from 489 year-end financial and production-record summaries.1,

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