Legacy Dairy - Always striving for improvement

“A one to two % improvement on pregnancy rates in my herd is worth a lot of money”

Plainview, a mid-sized town located right in the middle of the Texas pan-handle, is home to Legacy Farms a rapidly expanding operation. Brandon Bouma, owner and manager gives us his views on using outsourced management expertise on his dairy.

“We work with numerous vets and consultants” explains Bouma. “They are a different set of eyes and ears invariably providing fresh ideas which is a huge benefit for our dairy.” Having moved from El Paso a year ago to set up a new facility, Legacy Farms is already milking 4,600 cows and Bouma expects to reach the target of 6,000 cows by mid summer. And while usage of consultants might be thought of as the tonic to get a dairy’s repro program humming, for Bouma the scenario is a bit different.

“Our breeding program currently is very sound, but I wanted to fine tune it”, states Bouma. “It was not to overhaul our repro program but to squeeze a few extra percentage points in a program that is already going very well.” AltaPreg Fertility Specialist Dr. Carlos Simmonds worked with Bouma’s breeders providing a refresher course, completely in Spanish, on all aspects of reproduction. Bilingual himself, Bouma offers high praise for the skills Simmonds demonstrated:

“Carlos was really good with my guys and it was obvious that they respected him and were open to his suggestions for improvement”.

Legacy Farms sports reproductive results that many smaller dairies only dream of. “A 1 to 2% improvement on pregnancy rates in my herd is worth a lot of money”, says Bouma, defending his decision to bring in the Alta experts. “I’d be crazy to settle for very good when excellent is within reach.”

Bouma is always willing to try new things. Charlie Perotti, the AltaPreg program manager, and Dr. Simmonds were able to make suggestions that Legacy Frams has already incorporated. “Charlie showed me the data on the Advance semen straw and it was pretty convincing”, chuckles Bouma.

“And if Charlie tells me to try it, I will!” Legacy Farms has also begun using gun warmers, and has backed their voluntary waiting period from 55 to 60 days based on their advisement. Legacy Farms uses no Ovsynch, relying entirely on tail chalking and visual heat detection. Training and retraining are the key he explains. “I pay my employees well, but I expect them to do more as well. They are well trained and the payoff for me is that they are doing a good job.”

Besides growing to 6,000 cows, Legacy Farms also raises 8,000 heifers for his own herd as well as custom rearing for neighbors. Final thoughts from Bouma: “if you’re going to go through the work to breed AI, there’s a huge benefit to bringing in the experts to do things right.”

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Posted Oct 7th

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