Preparing for the upcoming breeding season

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Adequate nutrition plays an important role in the weeks leading up to the breeding season. Not only are cows heading towards peak milk production, they also need energy and nutrients to recover from calving and gear up for the breeding season.

Pre-breeding nutrition aims to reduce the negative energy balance all cows go through during the post-calving period. Body Condition Score (BCS) is a great way of keeping track of cows’ energy status. The target BCS for breeding is 3 – 3.25 and cows should not lose more than 0.5 in BCS since calving. Cows below the target BCS can be milked once-a-day or should be fed a higher rate of concentrates to improve their energy balance.

If BCS recording is not being done, Milk Protein < 3.05% can be used as an indirect indicator of NEB in cows in early lactation (<60 DIM). A Fat: Protein ratio >1.4 can also be used to indicate excessive NEB in Friesian herds, higher ratio’s apply to Jersey or JerseyX herds. Mineral supplementation is vitally important during the pre-breeding time as grass is deficient in many crucial minerals and trace elements such as Phosphorus, Copper, Selenium, Iodine and Zinc.

From three weeks before the planned start of breeding it is a good idea to spend some time every day on Pre-breeding heat detection. Watching the cows and recording those that stand to be mounted or using tailpaint or automated sensors to identify the cows that are already bulling will not only give you an idea of when to expect those cows to come bulling again 21 days later, but also flag non-cycling cows before the breeding season starts.

Any cows not seen bulling before the start of breeding, as well as cows that had a difficult calving, suffered from milk fever or held their cleanings should be seen and treated by a vet to correct the situation as quickly as possible and not delay those cows going in calf.

Special focus should be on your replacement heifers, these are the future stars of your milking herd, and getting them off on a good start as a milking cow next year starts by breeding those heifers successfully early on in the breeding season.

Heifers should achieve 60% of their mature body weight at breeding. -If you don’t know the mature weight of your cows, walk a selection of 3rd – 4th lactation cows onto a set of scales and take the average as a guide- Lighter heifers will not cycle, resulting in low submission rates during the breeding season.

Turn heifers out to grass at least 6 weeks prior to breeding, then weigh all of them 3 weeks before breeding start and offer concentrates to those behind target to let them catch up in time.

Take some time now to select the AI bulls you want to use this year. Establish the EBI of the herd and set a new EBI target to aim for. Decide on were the breeding priorities are in your herd: fertility, milk production, dairy-to-beef, mastitis, … and then select a team of bulls from the Active Bull List to use evenly across the herd.

Vaccinate the bulls with the same programme as the cows in your herd. Ensure bulls are healthy and in good condition before they go out with the cows, paying particular attention to the bulls’ feet to prevent lameness.

Vaccinations should be carried out ahead of the breeding season. Aim to have all vaccinations (Lepto, IBR, BVD) completed at least 1 week before breeding starts. The stress of handling animals and a potential inflammatory response to the vaccine may delay cows’ cycling in the week following vaccination. At this time of the year, adult cows in general will have had little exposure to parasites, breeding heifers however may still be quite susceptible to worms and a pooled faecal sample will provide insight into parasite burden and the need for dosing in this cohort. Parasites are a major cause of heifers not achieving their growth target!


First Published 20 March 2024

Tagged with: Other animals

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