Shropshire Farming Talk: Focus on fertility

One area to focus on is fertility within the dairy herd as a key driver for efficiency and ultimately productivity.

Fertility success is measured in many different ways but the one thing to focus on is 100 day in calf rate.

Increasing the number of animals in calf by 100 days will reduce average days in milk significantly.

In order to do this, there must be a real focus on heat detection. The standard cow cycle is 21 days however this can vary from 17-24 days.

Using a UK average of three serves per conception (34% conception rate) it will take a minimum of 51-72 days to get the average cow in calf from when you start serving her.

Over time, focusing on the fertility index in bull proofs will make a difference but in the short term focusing on serving cows from 42 days and making sure that as many as possible occur at intervals of 17-24 days should be the priority. If you do this then you will dramatically improve your fertility.

Milk pregnancy testing helps shorten the calving interval and reduce the number of days that cows are open.

Open cows can have a major impact on profitability. Research has indicated that the average cost per open cow is £4.50 per day. These costs include the value of the milk the cow would have produced, the value of her calf, and other relevant factors.

Therefore, if one cow stays open 20 days longer than expected, the farmer loses £90 on that single cow. Considering a 100-cow dairy farm, this effect can have a tremendous impact and can reduce profitability by as much as £9,000.

Using the Alertys milk pregnancy test from IDEXX, milk pregnancy testing enables dairy farmers to test during a lactation at the early stage, mid or late stage. The non-invasive pregnancy testing service, available from CIS, is a trusted and proven test enabling accurate screening of pregnancy in dairy cattle by easily incorporating testing into routine milk analysis.

By Amanda Wilkes, CIS Area Manager for Shropshire