As many farmers gear up and prepare for the busy breeding period, AgriLand spoke with dairy farmer Donal Carroll from Co. Kilkenny on how preparations are going and what the plan is for the weeks ahead.

Donal, who works as an artificial insemination (AI) technician for Eurogene AI Services (part-time), is farming full-time with his father, where they milk a herd of 75 pedigree Holstein cows.

The father-and-son team operates both an autumn and spring-calving system that sees 30% of the herd calve in autumn and 70% in spring.

The plan is to move up to 100 milking cows in the near future; however, a few improvements have to be made to facilitate that increase such as increasing the size of the milking parlour, for example.

‘Breeding starts at drying off’

Speaking to AgriLand about when preparations began for the breeding season, Donal explained: “For us, the breeding period starts at drying off really because you want to firstly: dry them off at the right time; then start to build up their condition; and, finally, make sure they calve down alright.

“If you can do those three things then you will be in a good place coming into the breeding season.”

When asked about how important it is to have cows in good condition well in advance of the breeding period, Donal said: “There’s no point trying to play catch up in the first week of April if your mating start date (MSD) is in the first week in May.

Cows won’t be able to put on enough condition or recover from any problems they had over the calving season – realistically, you’re only fighting a losing battle at that stage.

“In our case, if any cows had problems at calving we would make note of that and any thin cows would get extra meal in the parlour just to build up their condition.

“Over the last few weeks, we have been keeping a close eye on the few cows that did pose problems at calving or were lacking condition, just to see if they are showing signs of heat.”

Do you pre-scan your cows?

Normally the father-and-son duo would scan their cows before breeding; however, this year they have changed tactics.

Explaining their decision behind this, Donal said: “Normally we would scan our cows two weeks before breeding would start and any cows that had problems would be looked after.

“However, this year we didn’t. Instead, we have been keeping a good record and noting any cows that have come in heat. Thankfully, so far, the vast majority of the cows have shown signs of heat, and those that haven’t, there has been an obvious reason why.

Some cows were a bit thin or the odd one or two would have been a bit lame. We have 70 cows and we know them all by number, so we have a good idea of every individual cow and what sort of condition they are in.

“However, if we come into the second or third week of breeding and some of the cows aren’t cycling, which is usually only a small minority, they will be scanned if we think that there is something wrong.”

Nutrition and BCS

Donal was able to give an insight into how they have managed their cows since they calved down and how they have been able to keep them in relatively good nick.

He explained: “This year, we have had very few ‘problem cows’. We started grass measuring and got a grazing plan in place, which seems to be paying dividends, as the cows are producing more milk and they are in better condition.

“From going on other farms one thing I noticed, which I haven’t seen on our farm until this year, was that the hair was ‘skint off’ the cows, which is a sign that they are ‘bulling’ strong and showing good signs of heat.

A lot of that is down to hitting the ground running during the dry period and getting cows in good condition gradually over a couple of months.

“We fed up to 8kg of concentrates during the first 30 days of lactation – depending on the cow. An over-conditioned cow didn’t get that much, but the reason for feeding such high levels was to try and avoid cows going into a negative energy balance (NEB).

“As of now, most cows are on 3kg a day with some high-producing cows getting up to 6kg. The majority of the cows are roughly around a body condition score (BCS) of 3.0-3.5.”

Heat Detection methods

Moving onto the heat detection methods that are used on the farm, Donal said that they have changed tack in this area, going from tail painting the cows to using scratch cards.

He explained: “In the past, we would have used tail paint; however, we changed over to using scratch cards recently.

We found they work better with the split-calving herd. With the scratch cards, you can just put them on the cows you want to breed, which makes it easy to identify them.

“Whereas in terms of tail painting, some of the autumn-calved cows will still have paint on them when the breeding season comes along for the spring-calving herd.

“So, by using the scratch cards, it makes the job easier to identify which cows you want to breed basically.

“In terms of pre-breeding detection, we just keep an eye out for any cows we see that are in heat, whether it is out in the field or at milking time and we make note of it.”

Replacement heifers

There are 25 replacement heifers that will be bred this year. 16 of those will be bred in the coming week, while the rest will be bred later in the year.

Donal explained: “16 heifers will be served with AI, while the other nine will be bred later in the year so that they calve down the following autumn.

The heifers will get Fixed Time AI (FTAI). This is mainly because I haven’t time to be looking at them twice a day to see if they are coming into heat or not.

“So, they’ll be synchronised with CIDRs and, all going well, they will be served on May 1.”

The milking herd

Donal said that the plan is to commence breeding on May 1 and he outlined what the plan is for the duration of it.

Donal and his father AI the cows themselves. The bulls they choose are based on a number of factors.

He explained: “I pick bulls on the basis of their breeding economic index (EBI). I look for a balance of both milk and fertility. The aim is to breed cows that will produce good milk solids. The target fertility is between €90 and €110, with a slight positive for the maintenance index.

“As well as that, we always keep an eye on the confirmation and the type of bull that we choose.”

Donal was able to give us an insight into when the MSD is and how long the breeding season will last for.

He said: “The spring-calving herd will be served using AI. Generally what we do is nine weeks of AI to try and keep the calving season as compact as possible.

Last year, 87% of the herd calved in the first six weeks and this year it was something similar – which is quite good.

“Cows are served with a dairy sire for the first three weeks. In the subsequent three weeks, we will use a mixture of dairy and beef sires. The bottom 20% of cows, if they repeat after six weeks, will get a beef straw.

“In previous years, we would have gone with a Hereford or Angus bull on all the repeats; however, this year we are going with a Speckle Park bull.”