How often do milking cows die and from what causes? This is one of the first questions that needs to be answered when developing livestock insurance. In order to address a lack of data on milking cow mortality in the Republic of Georgia and support the design of valuable insurance and risk management for smallholder dairy farmers, the MicroInsurance Centre at Milliman (MIC@M), in the context of its Managing Risks for Rural Development (MRRD) project, organized a study on farm characteristics, practices, and mortality experience among smallholder dairy farmers. The MRRD project team designed a structured questionnaire, and in late 2019 the Georgian Farmers Association conducted 501 phone interviews with farmers in the Samtskhe-Javakheti and Kvemo Kartli regions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first quantitative survey on cow mortality in Georgia for at least a decade.