Early pregnancy-testing
Is it time to stop making excuses about your herd's reproductive performance? The weather and old cows cop most of the blame but in reality this is not where the main problems lie. It is possible to make significant improvements on your farm. The first step is to look at the information to see exactly where you are, what the issues are and what you stand to gain with improvement.
Early pregnancy-testing involves pregnancy-testing cows approximately 5-6 weeks after the end of AI and then rechecking the non-pregnant (not detected) cows 6 weeks after mating finishes. Ageing of pregnancies can be accurately carried out between 5 and 12 weeks of gestation. Early pregnancy-testing allows us to accurately age pregnancies which in turn produces the following benefits.
- Identification of late calving cows for induction
- Early culling of empty cows if feed becomes short
- Early drying-off of thin, young or early calving cows
- Milking later-calving cows for longer
- Knowing which cows to send away for grazing and for how long
- Allocating cows to the springer mob next season
- Assessing pregnancy losses e.g. if BVD or other diseases are suspected
- Calculation of 6-week in-calf rate
The operational guidelines for routine induction of dairy cattle states that from the 1st June 2012, the level of inductions within an individual herd should not exceed 4% of the herd's total size.
At the time of the first induction injection cows must be no more than 12 weeks and no less than 8 weeks from their expected calving date. To know this, the cows must be pregnancy-tested at a time that allows the date of conception to be accurately confirmed.
As well as the many management benefits which arise from early pregnancy-testing, the ability to analyse pregnancy and conception rates is vital to monitoring and improving herd reproductive performance. The six-week in-calf rate is a key driver of reproductive performance. This is an indicator of how quickly cows get in calf after the start of mating and should be a statistic that all farmers know and monitor for their herd. The InCalf target for 6-week in-calf rate is 78%.
Totally Vets is encouraging clients to sign up for Infovet, our new herd information management software. With Infovet we can enter pregnancy testing results directly into MINDA using a tough-book touch-screen computer on-farm, at the time of pregnancy- testing. Infovet is very easy to use and allows us to bring up the mating dates of each cow at the time of pregnancy testing. We can then produce a pregnancy rate graph and Fertility Focus Report to look at reproductive statistics quickly and easily. Other benefits of recording in this way include reduced pregnancy test recording errors and time saved as the data are uploaded to MINDA immediately. It is free to sign up for Infovet.
Early pregnancy-testing may not suit all farms. If you decide to only carry out a single pregnancy test, it is still very important that it is planned well to ensure you gain the most benefit from it.
Talk to your vet now to sign up for Infovet and to ensure your pregnancy-testing occurs at the right time to make the best management decisions for your farm and to start improving your herd's reproductive performance.
