I recently went to the theatre to see the baseball movie Moneyball. While watching, I saw many similarities to the recent changes in thinking as to how we measure reproductive performance in the dairy industry.
For those who have not seen the movie, it is about the Oakland Athletics trying to compete in major league baseball with a small budget. With limited funds, the Athletics had to start looking at things differently. Instead of focusing on getting superstars they could not afford, they started to focus on some very simple but important measurements to make their team as effective as possible.
In order to reach their goal of getting the most wins, the Athletics focused on scoring as many runs as possible. In order to get the most runs, they chose players who were good at getting on base (high on-base percentage). The traditional measure used before this was batting average. But what the Athletics found and used to their advantage was that having a high batting average doesn’t necessarily mean you get on-base a lot (strikeouts vs. walks).
By now, you must be wondering how this relates back to dairy herd management. Well, instead of focusing on wins, your goal is to fill quota. In order to fill quota, you must get cows pregnant (this replaces runs). To get cows pregnant in an efficient manner, you must get good at keeping your herd’s 21-day pregnancy rate above 20%. Pregnancy rate replaces the traditional measure of services per conception used to assess herd performance. Similar to batting average, having a low services per conception doesn’t necessarily mean you are getting enough cows pregnant to fill your bulk tank economically.
