With the beginning of April in sight, the focus on most dairy farms is now shifting towards the 2022 breeding season.
The success of the breeding season determines how your calving season will go in 2023.
A lot is riding on having a successful season, with compact calving being the goal on spring-calving dairy farms.
Breeding
Over the next couple of weeks, pre-breeding heat detection should be taking place on farms.
This is an important step to ensure that every cow is cycling in advance of the mating start date (MSD).
On farms where heat detection technology is not used, tail painting should take place.
Four weeks prior to the MSD, all the cows in the herd should be tail painted and any cows that had not cycled in the following 21 days, should be checked.
These cows are potentially not cycling and therefore, could have difficulty going in-calf.
Pre-breeding heat detection is an important step in getting as many cows in-calf in the first few weeks of breeding.
Body condition score
It is also important that body condition score (BCS) is monitored ahead of the breeding season.
Ideally, cows should be in a BCS of 2.75 to 3.25 entering the mating season.
For cows that are not in the correct BCS heading into the breeding season measures, such as once-a-day milking for low-BCS cows, need to be taken.
Problem cows
Cows that had any set back at calving need to be checked before the start of the breeding season. This includes cows that suffered from milk fever, retained placenta, a hard calving or those that had twins.
All of the above, along with a number of other issues, can compromise reproductive efficiency and if left unchecked could lead to those cows not going in-calf.
Scanning
Any cows that are determined to be ‘problem cows’ need to scanned or at least looked at by a vet.
This will help to determine what the issue is and if treatment is needed, with the aim of giving cows the best chance to be cycling when their MSD comes around.