Calving Intervals
Transcript of Select Sires' Reproductive Moment Program
on DairyLine Radio Which Aired April 6, 2006
With Ray Nebel,
Senior Reproduction and Herd Management Specialist, Select Sires Inc.

Ray, this week we are talking about calving intervals and the answer to what your calving interval should be, as you want as many pregnant cows as possible. How do you get to that answer?

If you speak to most dairymen, and say, “What’s your calving interval?”, most of them haven’t given it much thought, but if you say “How many pregnant cows do you want?”, they want as many as possible. How fast can they get those cows pregnant? Again, that comes into cyclicity, and again that voluntary waiting period. I told a story last week on one of the large dairies “a dairyman can never have too much money in a milk check and never had too many pregnant cows“. Those are the things that we say, “What calving interval is your goal?” and they will say “I want as many pregnant cows as possible.” So, the thing is, how quickly after calving can we get this cow pregnant? If we have a 12-month-calving interval, that is 85 days. In a 13-month calving interval it would be 115 days. A 14- month calving interval would be 145 days. I would sadly say that the national average right now is about 14.5 months calving interval.

Visiting farms, are you seeing an obvious change that needs to be made, that the producer doesn’t really see and say “Boy, you really need to change the days there”?

It is interesting, what we will try to do is look at where they are now and see if they can get cows pregnant now, when do they get pregnant in that herd. Most of the time I am visiting the herd with one of the Select Sires reproductive specialists who is local to that area. I am really at a training session, because I can’t go back on that farm ever, maybe the soonest would be six to twelve months from now. When I am out I am working with Select Sires reproductive solutions specialists, trying to pass my knowledge on to them. We first look at the herd and say “When are cows getting pregnant, when can that occur?” and many times the farm is trying to breed them at 30 or 45 days and the cow is not getting pregnant until 60. We really try to logically use their data to convince them where they should be.

Like looking through the trees in the forest saying, you’re sometimes so close to the situation on the farm.

We give them another set of eyes that are trained and that do this day-in and day-out, we come in and say where are you at, what can we do to get you a little more efficient. I think that is really one of the keys to the Select Reproductive Solutions. To have a professional who does this daily to come in and actually put an extra set of eyes looking at the situation.

Of course for any questions there is a Select Sires reproductive solutions specialist there at your fingertips.

At all ten members of Select Sires there are Reproductive Solutions specialists, usually three to four per co-op, within a region. These are people who are really getting up and going, who are really excited about what they do in working with farms.

That is Ray Nebel, Select Sires’ Reproductive Solutions specialist.