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Sandhill Dairy
Perham, Minnesota
Ottertail County
350 cows

Describe your facilities and list your breeding management team. We are milking in a double-10 parallel parlor three times a day. Heifers are kept at three facilities. Breeding-age heifers are kept in an indoor facility. Bob Dombeck oversees heifer breeding, and Deanna Harmann and Devin Meyer breed the cows.

What is your reproduction program? Do you use a synchronization program? How do you get animals pregnant? We have a 70-day voluntary waiting period. We were using a double-ovsynch program but are in the process of switching to SCR heat detection. If they are not bred by 100 days in milk, then they will be started on ovsynch. They are bred until pregnant or made a do-not-breed at 250 days in milk.

What are the top traits you look for in breeding your dairy herd and how has this changed since you started farming? We started genetic testing in 2011. We then started picking sires for genetic values, cheese merit and daughter pregnancy rate to bring good reproduction qualities back into the herd. We use high-quality bulls in the heifers and do embryo transfer in lower genetics animals. We have started to use sexed semen in all embryo transfers. All of the embryo transfer work is done by us. The top half of cows get sexed semen and the bottom half of cows get beef; all heifers get sexed semen. Now, we have a strong genetic milking herd.

What are certain traits you try to avoid? Low daughter pregnancy rate and big animals.

Describe the ideal cow for your herd. Strong, healthy, medium-framed animals.

What roles does genetics have in reaching the goals of your farm? Everything is based off of genetic scores.

What percentage of your herd is bred to sexed, conventional and beef semen? All heifers are bred to sexed semen. Half of the higher cows get sexed semen, and the lower half are bred to beef which is a combination of sexed and conventional.

What is your conception rate? How does this differ with different types of semen? Our conception rate is 32%; 30% for sexed semen, 30% for sexed beef semen and 38% for conventional beef semen.

What is the greatest lesson you have learned through your breeding program? Using all of the genetic information has greatly improved our herd and made us more efficient.

What is the age of your heifers at first service? 14 months.

How does your heifer inventory affect your breeding program? Our breeding program dictates our heifer inventory. We need approximately 12 heifers a month to keep up with culling. Our average age in the milking herd is 5, but right now, we have cows at 8 years old.

Tell us about your farm. We milk 350 cows and raise our heifers. We farm about 2,000 acres of corn, soybeans, alfalfa, and light and dark red kidney beans. I (Bob) work in partnership with my father, Mark, brother, Steve, and brother-in-law, Jeremy Lachowitzer.

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