Select Sires

CIDR® Inserts (Part One)
Transcript of Select Sires' Reproductive Moment Program
on DairyLine Radio Which Aired Nov. 24, 2005
With Ray Nebel,
Extension Specialist and Professor of Reproductive Management,
Virginia Tech

Ray, this week you are talking about the use of CIDR inserts. Let’s start with the label recommendations. There have been some changes in the past few years with that, haven’t there?

A little bit Bill. Initially it was approved by FDA for use in beef cattle and dairy heifers. That use was for synchronization, where it was inserted for seven days and prostaglandin was given either the day before removal or the day of removal. And then estrus was observed or checked for the next three days, and A.I. was recommended following the A.M./P.M. recommendation. If the cows were observed in estrus that morning, they were bred that afternoon. If they were observed that afternoon, they were bred the next morning. Shortly thereafter, six to nine months later, it gained approval for lactating dairy cows, and basically the same usage for synchronization where it was inserted for seven days, prostaglandin was given at the day before removal, and then visual observation for estrus in breeding A.M./P.M. off that visual observation.

Do you know what the expected pregnancy rate is for this program, and how it compares to other programs?

In beef cattle it has become a very popular program. With timed A.I. with CIDRs, first service is about 60 percent. 60 to 65 percent has been shown across large numbers of beef cows. In dairy cattle, it is in heifers where it has been used primarily. And again, very similar, 60 to 65 percent is what’s expected in one-time pregnancy synchronization. If we had 100 heifers, and we synchronized them with the CIDRs, we would expect, after ten days very short synchronization protocol, that we would have 65 percent of those heifers bred and pregnant by A.I.

For the research, the benefits of using this?

This is our only really easy way to use a progesterone compound, so researchers looked at some novel applications of how this could be used in the field. One of these has been for maintenance of pregnancies. We see, primarily in lactating dairy cows and high-producing cows, that we are losing roughly fifteen percent of these pregnancies between 30 and 50 days after breeding. So it was surmised that maybe these cows don’t have enough progesterone to maintain pregnancies coming from the corpus luteum, which got its name for pro gestational. It promotes gestation, or it promotes pregnancies. So this use came in where we put this CIDR, or CIDRs, inserted five days after breeding, again for seven days. So it's removed about day twelve, and that’s the critical period, right before maternal recognition, that we hopefully can help with a higher progesterone level and maintenance of pregnancy. Some research studies have shown an increase, and some have shown no difference. Researchers believe there is a subgroup of cows that it is really beneficial for, but we’ve really not identified which cows are the ones that are more likely to respond to this treatment.

Thank you, Ray. We’ll continue with more discussion on CIDR inserts on next week's Reproductive Moment. That’s Ray Nebel, Select Sires Reproductive Solutions Specialist™.

®CIDR is a registered trademark of InterAg, Hamilton, New Zealand.
™Reproductive Solutions Specialist is a trademark of Select Sires Inc.

Select Sires Inc., 11740 U.S. 42 North, Plain City, Ohio 43064 / Phone: (614) 873-4683 Fax: (614) 873-5751