The 2020 Four-State Dairy Nutrition & Management Conference normally held in Dubuque, Iowa is now a virtual conference to be delivered on Wednesday, June 10, 2020. Adisseo is sponsoring the pre-conference symposium on amino acid balancing, and highlights of the general conference include improving herd health and maximizing profit from bull calves. I will be presenting a breakout session on optimizing fertility of lactating dairy cows using sexed semen. You can register for the virtual conference online at the Four-State web site, and you can click on this link to download a copy of the 2020 Four State Program.

Optimizing fertility on dairy farms is necessary and challenging on today’s dairy farms. UW-Extension invites dairy farmers and their veterinarians to learn about fertility improvement opportunities. Dairy Reproduction Strategies Workshops will be held at three locations; contact the county Extension office for specific details including registration fees. RSVP by March 23 for each location.

• March 31, Abbotsford City Hall, Abbotsford, Extension Marathon County, 715-261-1230
• April 1, CVTC West Campus, Eau Claire, Extension Eau Claire County, 715-839-4712
• April 2, Westby VFW, Westby, Extension Vernon County at 608-637-5276

Dairy farmers, herd managers, veterinarians, artificial insemination technicians, and others are encouraged to attend a Dairy Reproduction Revolution Seminar on Wednesday, March 25th at the Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center, located at 7001 Gass Lake Road, Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Dr. Fricke will discuss how the High Fertility Cycle coupled with the dramatic increases in reproductive performance due to the development and adoption of fertility programs is a new paradigm that can now be used to explain much of the variation in reproductive performance among herds.

The 2019 Four-State Dairy Nutrition & Management Conference will be held at the Grand River Center in Dubuque, Iowa on June 12-13. I will be speaking about “Management Strategies in an Era of High Pregnancy Rates” from 9:10 to 9:50 am on Thursday, June 13. I hope to see you there!

Dairy Herd Management summarized my breakout session talk at the Four-State Dairy Nutrition & Management Conference in Dubuque, Iowa on June 14, 2018. Many factors affect twinning in dairy cows, but milk production and progesterone at the beginning of timed AI protocols that include a second prostaglandin treatment are two primary factors.

https://www.dairyherd.com/article/get-more-pregnancies-ai

Read about our latest research in the latest issue of Dairy Herd Management on why about 20% of nonpregnant cows don’t return to estrus between AI and pregnancy diagnosis conducted 32 d after AI.

I had the opportunity to speak for the May, 2016 Hoard’s Dairyman webinar series. The video of the webinar is linked on my web site here:

Videos

I made the cover of the May/June issue of Bovine Veterinarian magazine. Looks like we can have high milk production AND high fertility in lactating dairy cows.

The 2016 Four-State Dairy Nutrition and Management Seminar will be held on June 15-16 at the Grand River Center in Dubuque, IA. The final brochure of the program including a registration form can be downloaded here. I will be presenting on Thursday morning.

This program is a collaborative effort of Cooperative Extension members from Iowa State University, the University of Illinois, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin.