Visiting Herds Part II
Transcript of Select Sires' Reproductive Moment Program
on DairyLine Radio Which Aired January 12, 2006
With Ray Nebel,
Senior Reproduction and Herd Management Specialist, Select Sires Inc.
Ray, let’s pick up where we left off last week, where you were traveling visiting various herds around the country all in different sizes. A couple of things they had in common, the ones you were impressed with, were the management of the herds, employees were around for many, many years and the other was combining synchronization with heat detection.
That’s right. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. If you look at today’s costs, to go to five injections are somewhere between 10 and 12 dollars per cow to get those five injections of the hormones. Normally cycling cows will respond to prostaglandin in a good heat detection program where they are using the chalk and walking through cows. These farms are catching somewhere between 80 and 85 percent off the prostaglandin injection, which would reduce the cost tremendously. Only the cows that really needed it and that they couldn’t identify came on the back end, and 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 come into a positive energy balance. It was the best of both worlds: They weren’t trying to breed timed AI too early in lactation and they were using heat detection and getting them all bred by 100 or 105 days in milk.
You mentioned that all three of these herds that you visited were all different sizes?
Yes, it was interesting they were all 3X milking, but one had a rotary parlor, the other two had different types of rapid-exit parlors. It was a different design. They did use headlocks to lock up cows, but one of them was about twice the size of the other one. Again, I think the protocols were being carried out by long-term employees, people who were happy at their job probably doing an excellent job. I think that was the key we saw, there were people that had been there 20 to 30 years, and had grown as the operation grew, took on more responsibility so you knew the protocols and the compliance of the cows getting the right injections were occurring. The protocols were a hybrid—it wasn’t all heat detection and it wasn’t all synchronization—but they were taking the best from both worlds.
In your experience, in the past, have you seen herds doing all heat detection and you can kind of compare now and see then make recommendations to those who aren’t doing that?
In fact, I have some meetings in Ohio at the Ohio Veterinary Conference. I have taken in some examples of herds that do 100 percent heat detection versus herds that do 100 percent timed AI. Then I’m using the records from two of these herds to show them a mixture in between. All three I’m taking examples from are from excellent herds and what I am trying to push the pencil on is really the cost of getting this done and some of the efficiencies of conception rate and so forth. One program doesn’t fit everyone when we go to a farm. What are the strengths and weaknesses on that farm and what can they do or can’t do and how can we build a program to fit their personnel and what can happen on that farm.
Thank you, Ray. That’s reproductive solutions specialist, Ray Nebel from Select Sires.
