With this year’s breeding season coming to an end, it is now time to determine how successful it has been.
Determining which cows are in-calf is important firstly, to ensure that you are not carrying extra stock over the winter and secondly, to get an idea as to how compact the calving season will be.
Breeding
With costs being so high in 2022, non-productive cows should be removed from the herd as early as possible.
Selling cows that are not in-calf will also greatly help with the building of autumn-covers on your farm.
The target for the calving season is that 90% of cows will calf in the first six-weeks.
If farmers are on track for this target, or close to it, it will mean that they will have a busy first six-weeks of calving.
The only way you will know that you are on target to achieve this is by testing your cows for pregnancy.
Scanning
Scanning cows is the most commonly used method to determine whether or not they are pregnant.
A pregnancy can be detected 30 days after service, so in theory you could scan your cows 30 days after ending the breeding season or pulling the bull.
However, it will may make more sense to wait another couple of weeks to ensure that no cows are missed.
The aim is for scanning results to be as accurate as possible, as this will give the best results and the most accurate dates.
Milk sampling
Another method to determine whether cows are in-calf is milk pregnancy testing.
This works by simply taking a small milk sample and sending it to the lab, which will determine whether or not the cow in pregnant..
It does this by detecting protein changes in the milk that are associated with pregnancy.
This method will only determine if cows are in-calf and will not be able to give additional information such as calving dates or if a cow is carrying twins.