Your Herds Reproduction Performance

Herd Reproduction……have you looked at your herd's performance?

The season is drawing to a close and its time to assess what has happened over the last year, and what we can do differently next year. How many cows got in calf, and what is your calving spread? How many inductions do you have? Have you ever worked out how much empty and late cows cost you? Do you know why they happened?

For whatever reason, eg. a heat detection problem, poor feeding resulting in poor conception rate etc., if you have a poor mating outcome the costs are considerable.

The factors to consider are:

1. lack of milk production due to animals not calving, or calving late
2. increased number of empties (and loss of sale of calves from these animals)
3. lack of heifer calves - cost of replacement
4. cost of failed AB, i.e. semen and technician costs
5. cost of inductions for late calvers
6. cost of extra anoestrous cows at the start of the following mating

Example: 250 cow herd with a 20% conception to first round of AB, instead of the normal 60%. The herd is split calving, so only have 6 weeks of mating.

This means that have 50 cows in calf instead of 150, so have 50 cows milking instead of 150, and 25 heifer calves instead of 75.

Therefore, you have loss of milk for 3 weeks at start of lactation, i.e.100 cows averaging1.4kgMS/cow/day, in 21 days produce 2,940kgMS, at $3.60/kgMS = $10584.

Have replacement of 50 heifer calves at $200/hd = $10,000.

There are more empties than normal as only 60% of the 100 cows get in calf in the next round of AB. This means that you have 40 extra empty cows after the next 3 weeks of mating. Replacement of 40 cows @ $1000 each, with a cull price of $400. $1000 - $400 = $600 = $24,000 total.

Failed AB costs are $1500 for the technician and $13/straw , a total of $3,000.

Anoestrus cows: around 40 cows calve late and have less than 40 days to the start of the next mating, They need to be treated for anoestrus to ensure a normal calving pattern next year. At approximately $55/head, for examination, a CIDR re-synchrony programme and early scanning, this is $2200. There are no inductions because this is a split calving herd with a short mating period.

The total expenses as listed are $49784, or $50,000, and these calculations do not include the flow on effect into the following year's calving pattern!

So how can we avoid it happening again?

 If you do not know what the problem is, then your veterinarian or consultant can carry out a reproductive analysis for you to identify the problem. Seeing the costs above, this is a well spent $500! The example above is a dramatic one, but even for a 50% conception rate instead of 60% to the first round of AB, the costs would be $12500 (worked out as above).

If it turns out to be a feeding problem, then now is the time to address it. It may be a long term one, linked to poor cow condition at calving and subsequent marginal feeding, or it may be a short term one such as lack of feed energy during mating. You may even find that the problem is associated with certain cows eg. a Friesian herd with a proportion of American genetics – under certain feeding regimes, it is often the American cows that fail on the reproductive side. With planning, you can avoid the problem and have a more economic herd performance.

Ali Cullum
Veterinarian and Intelact Dairy Consultant