Keys to good fertility management
Fertility management of your herd is fundamental for dairy farm profitability, ensuring your herd is below the national calving index of 420 days.
There are a number of factors that disrupt the sign of heat and fertility. These include health issues and behaviour. Maintaining heat detection must be a top priority by keeping production diseases to a minimum and working with your vet and nutritionist to maintain a healthy herd.
For all-year-round calving herds, the service window is day 50 to day 200 in milk. That gives a five-month window to get your individual cow in calf. Fertility success is a function of two things – getting cows served, that is, heat expression and detection; and achieving pregnancy, that is, conception rate.
Pregnancy associated glycoprotein detection using milk samples has a 98 per cent level of accuracy and is an efficient non-invasive way to find the non-pregnant cows as soon as you can after service. Using this method at key stages of the fertility cycle is a cornerstone to good fertility management.
Watch on YouTube the CIS & IDEXX Pregnancy for Profit webinar to learn more, at www.thecis.co.uk/fertility-webinar
Janette Mathie is Cattle Information Service head of field services
