The Importance of Pregnancy Rates in cows , Buffalo's , marry, Donkey. Dogs and Cats.

The Importance of Pregnancy  Rates in cows , Buffalo's , marry, Donkey. Dogs and Cats,

Fertility is the key driver to a Dairy’s performance and profitability. Poor fertility, longer lactation, less calves per year born, lower milk per cow and higher culls.

There are many factors as we know that effect fertility from lameness, feeding, climate to operator skills. In reality most of the negative factors are usually out of the control of the breeder, but the breeder is the first target of criticism when things go wrong.

Pregnancy rates measure a Dairy’s performance much more efficiently than conception rates. By taking into account when a cow is eligible for service and when a cow gets in calf, you get a far better idea of performance.

Example, cow being served once at 400 DIM and getting in calf with 1 service has 100% conception rate but is not very efficient. So pregnancy rate simply takes your voluntary waiting period (calved to when you want to start serving) say you start breeding at 60 DIM, and then every 21 day cycle is a possible pregnancy, the longer it takes the lower the results.

A good pregnancy rate is 25 – 30%. Globally average is around 15% and I have seen rates down as low as 5%. The chart below shows that this does not need to be a long battle in order to correct, if things are not perfect. The only changes to double the pregnancy rate on farm in chart, were some management changes and protocol changes. From then on its just a case of monitoring, discussing and checking daily.

Heat detection is key, it doesn’t matter if it is manual (as it is below in chart) electronic detection, per / ovsynch or any other variant, it just needs to be good. Personally I believe electronic and / or a skilled operator is second to none and most cow ‘friendly’. Ovsynch, although I recognize its place, I think just breeds complacency and is costlier.

The change here in these figures was a simple implementation of breeding protocols, no per or synchronous.

If the heat rate is 65 / 75% or more then you should achieve top pregnancy rates. One thing I have come across before is finding cows marked as ‘cull’ or ‘Do not Breed’ far too early in order to maintain the figures on paper as these animals come out of the calculation. One farm I found 11% of the herd marked as Do Not Breed, checked them all and served the ‘OK’ ones, and the unit ended up with 240 cows that would have been culled for the wrong reasons.

Staff really are the key players on fertility, a good herd management programmed should aid them too. Looking for the non-obvious signs of heat is the difference in ability, I have consistently found up to 8% of a herd can have ‘silent’ heats. I have seen this, served cows and been successful time and time again. Time spent looking and knowing the herd is the difference, size of herd is irrelevant as a good stock person can see these signs on a 2 cow herd or a 20,000 cow herd.

Financial gains of increasing pregnancy rate are simple – depending on whos research you look at and milk price, the range is $15 to $35 per cow per year.

So take mid-range at $25 per cow per year per 1% change.

On a 1000 cow herd for every 1% change the is a financial change of $25,000

Taking a look back at the example above where a 15% improvement has been made in just 3 months, for every 1000 cows in that herd $375,000 extra has been achieved.

Information is key, if you know what you are achieving, then you know your strengths and weaknesses are. It is also crucial to check the information yourself, not everything your told is always true!

We may not be able to control milk price, straights prices etc but huge financial gains and losses can be made on farm and quickly.

Good heat detection = good preg rates = significant financial gain