Breeding 2021 has come to a conclusion on most spring-calving dairy herds, with the next task being to get cows scanned, in order to determine how successful the breeding season has gone.
But if recent data is anything to go by, some ‘spring-calving’ herds have continued to breed cows passed the desired breeding end date. Almost 390,000 dairy cows – more than one-quarter of spring-calving Irish dairy cows – calved later than April 1, in 2019 and 2020.
Scanned yet?
The most commonly used method for determining how successful the breeding season has been is scanning cows.
Another method that is becoming more and more popular is milk pregnancy testing – but that has its drawbacks compared to scanning.
Scanning helps to identify cows that are carrying twins and determine how many days a cow is in-calf.
Days in-calf is important to determine the sire of the calf; a cow may have been served early in the breeding season.
Identifying twins is also important as more often than not, a cow having twins will need assistance to calf. A breech calving is also not uncommon for a cow having twins.
You may not have seen her in heat again and thus presumed she was in-calf, but she may have lost the pregnancy.
This is important to determine because it may have made her go from a February-calving cow to an April or May-calving cow.
If she was a February-calving cow she would have been dried off in November, only for her to have a six-month dry period.
Heifers
Scanning is also important to identify cows that are not in-calf, so you can determine how many heifers will be required.
If the breeding season has gone well you may have excess heifers to sell to other dairy farmers.
You may also unfortunately discover that a different number than expected of your cows are in-calf and you may need to purchase replacement stock.
Making these discoveries now is much better than in a few months time, when it will most likely be too late to correct the issue.