With the various challenges the industry has been facing in recent years everyone has been looking at efficiency and cost cutting in all aspects of their farm businesses. Ian Cure discusses some real on farm successes where the focus has been on fertility as the driver for efficiency and ultimately productivity.
The graph below shows that milk efficiency is at its highest 40-80 days in milk and as such the higher proportion of cows that can be in this range at a given time, the more efficient milk production will be.
Fertility success is measured in many different ways but the one thing that I really focus on is 100 day in calf rate. If you can get a large number of animals in calf by 100 days then you will reduce average days in milk significantly. In order to do this there must be a real focus on heat detection. With cows cycling every 17-21 days, using a UK average of three serves per conception (34% conception rate) it will take a minimum of 51-63 days to get the average cow in calf from when you start serving her.
Conception rate is what it is; you will never really alter this. Over time, focusing on the fertility index in bull proofs will make a difference but in the short term it’s about starting serving from 42 days and making sure that as many serves as possible occur at intervals of 17-21 days. If you do this then you will dramatically improve your fertility.
Examples 1 and 2 show two farms that have taken different approaches to heat detection.
