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Lactation strategies

Fernando Masia

brain  Rethinking Lactation: What If One Calf Per Year Isn’t Optimal?

I just finished reading a paper published by van Knegsel and others on extended lactations in dairy cows, and it really challenged the traditional mindset of aiming for a one-year calving interval.

Pushpin  Key insights:

• Extending the voluntary waiting period (VWP) can reduce the number of transition periods, which may improve cow health and fertility.

• It may also help reduce the surplus of calves, an increasingly relevant issue in the dairy sector.

• However, there are trade-offs: milk yield efficiency (especially Milk Yield/Calving Interval) can vary, and there's a risk of fattening in late lactation, particularly in multiparous cows.

Speech balloon How are you approaching lactation length in your herd or region?

• Are you already customizing VWP based on individual cow traits like persistency, peak yield, or BCS?

• What tools or indicators help you decide when to delay insemination?

Let’s share experiences and ideas, especially around how to balance milk yield, fertility, and welfare in extended lactation strategies.

  • 0

    We’ve been trying longer VWP the last few years, waiting like 100 or 120 days on some cows that do good. They seem healthier after calvin and don’t drop milk so fast. Still figurin’ out which cows it works best on, some get too fat if we wait too long. Watchin’ BCS and milk helps but its not that always easy. Wanna know how others pick which cows to wait on. It ain’t the same for everyone.

  • 0

    What’s really interesting is how extended lactation strategies show a bigger shift toward more individualized, data-driven cow management. The fact that you’re experimenting with longer voluntary waiting periods like 100 to 120 days shows there’s a lot of room to optimize both cow welfare and system efficiency if it’s done thoughtfully and intentionally.

    One thing I find especially valuable from van Knegsel’s research is the focus on reducing transition periods. Having fewer transitions could mean fewer metabolic challenges and less stress for the cows, which fits well with long-term herd health goals. But like you said, it’s definitely not a one-size-fits-all approach. Tracking things like persistency, body condition score, and parity closely is really important.

    In terms of tools, I’ve seen farmers using milk yield curves, body condition score monitoring, and automated health alerts to help decide which cows can handle extended lactations without negative effects. Some are even starting to bring in AI prediction models to support those decisions.

    It would be really interesting to know if anyone is linking lactation strategy directly to lifetime production or trying to quantify the impact of having fewer calves per cow each year. There’s a lot to explore here.

    Let’s keep sharing what works and where the challenges still are.

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