The breeding season has started for some and is only beginning for others; however, by now you should have a plan in place about how you are going to manage the breeding season on your farm.
Without a plan, the breeding season can become a lot busier than it needs to be and can lead to a lot of confusion.
The plan doesn’t necessarily have to be written down, but it should be clear in your head because once you begin breeding, the time for thinking things through is a lot shorter.
Divide up breeding groups
It is not when the artificial insemination (AI) technician is in the yard that you should be deciding whether the cow in the crush is getting a replacement straw, a beef straw or no straw.
The herd should be divided into three groups: Cows being bred for replacements; cows getting beef AI; and cows marked for culling.
The best thing to do is examine your economic breeding index (EBI) report and/or milk recording report, come up with a target performance level and any cows below this target should either get beef AI, or perhaps they need to be considered for culling.
Eliminating those cows with poor genetic merit will ensure the best genetics are coming through in your future replacement heifers.
Breeding season progress monitoring
Your plan should include how you intend to get as many cows bred as quickly as possible. The target three-week submission rate is 90%, so you should try to achieve, or get as close as possible to, this figure.
For a 110-cow herd – with 100 cows intended for breeding – to achieve a three-week submission rate you would need to be submitting four to five cows a day for breeding in order to reach the target of 90% in three weeks.
If you begin breeding and you are not achieving this target, you may need to improve your heat detection game.
This could include going out and observing cows a few hours after milking in the morning, evening or in the middle of the day; or perhaps your method of heat detection needs to be reviewed to see if anything needs to be changed.
All cows bred must be recorded, and your progress should be reviewed throughout the season.
Dealing with non-cyclers
It is vital that your plan includes how you are going to deal with non-cyclers.
Some farmers carry out pre-breeding heat detection and catch any non-cyclers then; others wait until they have started breeding and scan what is not bred after three-weeks.
From the scan you will be able to tell what is going on, and you will be able to decide from there whether the cow needs a wash out, a hormonal treatment or simply more time.
If a cow is calved less than 35 days she will not be showing signs of heat, so these cows usually just need more time to resume cycling.
Bulls
Finally, your plan should include when the vasectomised bulls and/or stock bulls will be let out to the herd.
The important thing to remember with vasectomised bulls is not to introduce them to the herd too early. As the amount of cows bred increases, the harder it is to detect cows in heat – which is usually an indication that additional heat detection is needed.
If you introduce them to the herd too early – when the amount of activity is high – they can get worn out or injured, leaving them out of action for the rest of the season.
The best thing to do is to introduce them after three-weeks of breeding, when the activity has died down and picking up cows becomes more difficult.