Commentary
One of three cows you see on a dairy farm will be culled. It is a shocking figure and represents many factors that impact individual cow and overall dairy performance. Preventative strategies help reduce losses to death and sickness and allow dairies to cull voluntarily to improve genetics and eliminate poor doers.
Understanding culling rates and reasons is helpful when servicing or calling on individual dairies. It is a logical starting point to engage producers in conversations about their decisions affecting cow health and production. In other words, “seek first to understand.”
Source: Dairy Herd Management, August 16, 2024. Link.
Evaluating the reasons that cows are leaving the herd can help to target the management areas that need improvement.”