Breeding the Complete Cow to Increase Profitability

Lifetime Net Merit (LNM$) is an estimate of an animal's ability to improve the profits of the dairy farm. Measured in dollars, LNM$ calculates the net profit over the lifetime of a bull's average daughter. 

LNM$ is revised regularly to reflect progress in identifying and evaluating traits that affect the farm's bottom line. The current LNM$ is the most profit-oriented sire index available. It is divided into three sections: production traits, health traits and conformation. The production traits stand for 46 percent of the LNM$ total and cover the areas of protein and fat. The health traits are 41 percent of LNM$ and comprise of productive life, somatic cell score, daughter pregnancy rate, calving ease and stillbirths. The final section, conformation, is 13 percent of LNM$ and includes body size, foot and leg composite, and udder composite.

A good combination of these traits leads to a longer-lasting, healthier, more profitable cows with correct udders, sound feet and legs that breeds back easily, and produces milk efficiently. Most importantly, incorporating LNM$ into the breeding program will maximize genetic progress for improved profitability.

To provide an example of how LNM$ could work on your farm, we will compare two sires: Sire A and Sire B. Sire A has a LNM$ of +900. Sire B has a lower LNM$ score of +160. These numbers mean that if you bred one cow to Sire A and one cow to Sire B, it is expected that the Sire A daughter will be $740 more profitable over her lifetime than the Sire B daughter due to the possibility of a longer productive life, good conformation and better health traits.