Visiting Herds Part I
Transcript of Select Sires' Reproductive Moment Program
on DairyLine Radio Which Aired January 5, 2006
With Ray Nebel,
Senior Reproduction and Herd Management Specialist, Select Sires Inc.

Ray, you’re back from a recent trip traveling around visiting various herds.

Yes, Bill, I had a six-week stretch where I was out every week going to different member co-ops, visiting farms and putting on meetings. One of the things that really impressed me was a large farm in northern Indiana, about 3,500 cows; then there was a farm around the Jerome, Idaho area right at 6,000 cows; and there was a farm just about an hour south of Salt Lake City of 5,500 cows; and at all three of these farms two of the things they had in common were, one, high milk production—daily production per cow was over 80 pounds per cow; the thing that was really amazing to me was the excellent reproduction. All three of these herds had roughly between a 12 and 13-month calving interval.

What are they doing?

Well, the common thread in all of those, there were two things: One is employees, and all three of these farms’ employees had been there for a long time. All three farms had employees who had been there for 20 years or longer, which is kind of unheard of. So it must have been a good place to work and good working relationships because you had long-term employees, but the second one was their protocol.

How was their protocol different?

The protocol was kind of a hybrid—it was a mix of visual heat detection using chalk once a day, walking through the herd when they were locked up after feeding, looking for the disappearance of the chalk and breeding cows that had been mounted since the last period of observation. The second one was after a series, they would start at about 45 days in milk and triggered off of a prostaglandin injection to induce cycling cows to come into heat in three to five days. It would be a large group of cows cycling or coming into heat in three to five days; cows that they haven’t bred would get a second shot two weeks later and then two of the three herds actually used the third injection two weeks after that. The cows that haven’t shown roughly about 100 days in milk, they would then clean this up with an Ovsynch program, which is a timed AI program. It was really a hybrid program where they are using a heat detection and prostaglandins to induce estrus. Then those cows after two or three rounds of this type of method trying to clean up, or all of the other cows that haven’t been bred by that time, are using the GNRH seven days later prostaglandin, two days later GNRH in a timed AI program.

So a little different then from the 100 percent heat detection. Combining both heat detection and synchronization.

That’s right. It makes a lot of sense because if you look at today’s costs, to go to five injections it’s somewhere between 10 and 12 dollars per cow. To get those five injections of the hormones and in normally cycling cows will respond to prostaglandin and a good heat detection program where they are using the chalk and walking through cows, these farms were catching somewhere from 80 to 85 percent off the prostaglandin injections. Which would reduce the cost tremendously and only the cows that really needed it that they couldn’t identify came on the back end. Many times you think those cows wouldn’t have a normal conception rate, but I think they got a good conception rate on the Ovsynch cows even though they were breeding the normal cows early. They are giving them 60 days longer to start cycling and coming into a positive energy balance. So, it was kind of the best of both worlds: They weren’t trying to breed timed AI too early in lactation and were using heat detection; but also getting them all bred by 100-105 days in milk.

We will continue more next week with Ray Nebel, Select Sires’ Reproductive Solutions specialist.