Darren Sutton: Staying focused on getting cows in calf

Stay focused when getting cows in-calf.

It is mid-November and this is a time when our focus and effort in getting cows back in-calf can start to wane.

The bulls will be in many herds now and the temptation is to relax our attention.
After looking at many calving rate reports this spring, I've seen a drop off in in-calf rates for the last three weeks of mating. To make sure this doesn't happen to you, are you doing all you can to address this?

Second round slump

The later calving cows are often late for the fact they are poor in fertility, so staying focused on picking up those quieter heats becomes very important. This often ties in with human fatigue. What can be done on your farm to keep the focus with those responsible for picking the cows?

Keep doing the paddock checks, and keep the detection aids like tail paint in top condition. The use of scratchies or Kamars certainly can help make the decision more obvious.

It's very important to return your mated cows back to their herds to ride and help identify tomorrow's bulling cows.

The second round slump can be linked also to a drop in feed quality. November has us trying to fight nature as it sends the ryegrass into masses of seed heads. Pre-mowing, or topping and keeping the nitrogen going behind the cows will help keep pastures in a leafier state than doing nothing. Watch what your milk protein levels are doing.
A 15 per cent drop or trend downwards is an indication that your feed quality has dropped.

Bull management

Have you got enough bull power? You will need about one bull per 30 empty cows on the farm. You can roughly assume that you have about 50 per cent of the cows in-calf from the AB straws you have used.

The rest of the cows are empty, so divide that number by two and then again by 30 to work out how many active bulls you need in the herds.

Another rough calculation is have the same number of bulls in the herd to match the same number of cows bulling each day. Bulls struggle to keep up if having to service two cows per day.

You will also need bulls to provide rest and rotation so they don't become tired or lame. Every farm differs in required level of cover, but two teams of bulls rotated every 24 hours works well.

If you are a bit light on numbers, you can consider bringing spare bulls back from the yearlings if they are past four weeks mating. Leaving half the bulls with the yearlings will be fine (but there must be at least two sound bulls left there). These smaller bulls are best used over your smaller herd of first and second calvers.

Short gestation length (SGL)

An option that is growing in popularity is using SGL AI at the very end of mating. The Crossbred SGL straws will bring an average cow forward by 10 days. Many farmers are enjoying the benefits of doing 12 weeks total mating (or less) and calving being completed in 10.5 weeks.

This also has the benefit of being able to get the bulls off the farm before Christmas.
This does mean having to re-tail paint and switch on in heat detection, but the pay-off comes next spring!

In smaller herds a teaser bull can help, but otherwise time spent observing in the paddock will work.

If you are tailing off with beef bulls, then better to remove the bulls 14 days before the planned end of mating and start the SGL AI, due to the beef breeds having longer gestation lengths.

Pregnancy detection

If you are planning on doing early pregnancy detection, get it booked in now. Best time to scan the first four weeks of mating is about six to eight weeks after that. For a mid-October start of AI will mean about an early to mid-January scan. The final scan can be done six weeks after mating ends.

If you are not planning an early scan, then you should record all natural matings into MINDA to provide more accurate dates for the scanner later on. This will help provide valuable information for decisions around culling and drying off based on BCS and days till calving.

Have a think over what areas you could improve in this mating from the areas discussed above and take action. It is the attention to all the small things that accumulate to success of your herd's reproduction.