Reproductive report card: Are your cows and heifers at the top of the class

By Phil Beatson - Genetic Development Strategist

Remember the progress report cards you got at school? Some of the comments might have suggested ‘improvement needed’, but the good thing about them was that it wasn’t too late to work on that improvement and get great A+ results at the end of the year. The same thing often applies to your farming operation: it’s usually better to get an ‘improvement needed’ alert while there is still time to make a difference, rather than looking back and wondering what went wrong.

One of the simplest measures that would be on your whole-herd reproductive performance report card would be Body Condition Scoring. There’s a clear link between body condition score and reproductive performance. The majority of your cows should have a body condition score (BCS) of 5.0 – 5.5 at calving to give birth easily, move straight into profitable production and begin cycling again to get in calf early. Dairy NZ has a great handbook that will help you to accurately condition score your cows, beginning with selecting at least 70 random cows to score. To achieve BCS targets, you may need to increase feed for the entire herd during this late lactation period, or if you have cows that are particularly light, you may need to consider preferential feeding, putting these cows onto once-a-day milking, or drying them off early to allow them to gain condition. Remember, that whatever production you lose now will more than be made up for in terms of next year’s production, overall health and reproductive success.

Part of the reproductive success you’ve already achieved will be staring you in the face right about now. Your in-calf heifers should be at close to 90% of their mature liveweight by now and great-lookinggood enough to give you a new enthusiasm for what you do. Are they everything they should be? Regular calf and heifer weighing allows you to track this progress throughout their lives, again allowing you to take action if they start falling behind. Particularly if your replacement heifers are grazed off-farm, weighing is essential to ensure that you are getting your money’s worth from your grazier and that your heifers return to the home farm set up to be long-term and productive members of the herd.

When those top heifers do return, looking like they should, it seems a shame that their first calves, usually sired by Jersey bulls run with the heifer herd, are seldom worth keeping. Today, there are a number of products and solutions that are suitable for heifers, providing the faster genetic gain of good AB heifer calves from your highest genetic worth animals while retaining the easy-calving properties of the often-used Jersey bull. If you’re looking at increasing cow numbers, moving to a larger farm, or have a market for surplus heifer calves, the decision is even clearer and your artificial breeding company can find a programme that will work for you.

‘Improvement needed’? No problem. The reproductive performance of your herd and the increased profitability that a good in-calf rate brings are in your hands. It’s your choice, your profit– and we can help.

Published in Dairynews; April 14, 2009