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Silent
Heats
by Earl Ingram
Select
Sires Reproductive Management
& Training Specialist
By far, heat
detection is the greatest challenge to an efficient A.I. program.
The national heat detection rate is about 50 percent, which means
that the other 50 percent of heats are not detected. This has a
huge cost to dairy farmers.
Heats have been
classified into four categories based on their duration (time between
first and last time they stand to be mounted) and intensity (number
of mounts per hour). The first three categories are fairly easily
detected, either because cows spend a long time in heat or because
while they are in heat they are very active. But the fourth category
is not easily detected; it¡¦s classified as ¡§short
duration and low intensity,¡¨ and approximately 25 percent
of heats are presented this way.
In the field,
I have heard many names for these heats, like hidden heats, silent
heats, etc. The reason these heats are difficult to detect is because
while in heat, the cows may stand only once or twice to be mounted,
and that may occur in a time period of less than two hours. Most
of the time, technicians choose not to breed a cow that they determine
is not presenting a strong heat. That is a mistake, because silent
heats are just as fertile as strong heats.
There are things
you can do to confirm that a cow is really in heat:
1. Look for any secondary signs of heat that she may be presenting.
2. Check your records for heat interval, prostagladin shots, etc.
3. Arm her looking for mucus discharge and/or uterine tone.
Keep in mind
that just because you are in doubt, there is a good chance she is
in heat, and when in doubt, breed. If you do not breed her, you
may be passing up a fertile heat and will not have another chance
to breed her for three weeks. Now, if you decide not to breed her,
write down her ID and the date so that in three weeks, when she
puts you in doubt again, you will recognize that that is the way
she presents heat, and you will then breed her.
Remember that
you must do everything possible to generate the greatest number
of pregnancies for our customers.
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DETECT advanced estrus detection system
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Key
Performance Indicators for Dairies
by
King Smith
Select
Sires Western Manager
of Technical Service Programs
In today’s
challenging dairy economy when producers are looking for any
advantage they can find, wouldn’t it be great to have
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to let them know where their
breeding program is heading?
We currently
do an excellent job analyzing where we have been with a dairy’s
reproduction program, but we are not doing an adequate job
determining where the program may be heading. One way we could
paint this picture is by monitoring how well the animals are
doing that will be entering into our next breeding window.
This would mean looking at animals whose days in milk are
less than the dairy’s voluntary waiting period (i.e.
less than 60 days in milk). We know that the major contributor
to how animals in this particular timeframe are doing depends
heavily on how they handle the transition period (three weeks
prior to freshening to three weeks after freshening).
As we
began to look at monitoring how well animals do in the transition
period, there are several production indices that could be
used as KPIs. Three of these are start milks by lactation
groups, early days in milk butterfat percentages, and week
four milk weights. All of these are KPIs of how animals are
transitioning. First let¡¦s take a look at start
milk weights. Start milk weights give us a glimpse of how
animals are doing during early lactation and the period in
which we are concerned. The client’s dairy software program
is a good source for this information. The command in DairyComp
305 for this report is as follows: GRAPH MILK BY DIM BY LCTGP
DOWNBY FDAT FOR FDAT>-150\B.
This command
will give you a scatter graph where you can isolate animals
in the first 50 days in milk. Depending upon the production
level of the herd, first lactation animals below 50 pounds
and second and greater lactation animals less than 60 pounds
could be considered ¡§broken¡¨ animals.
The appearance of many broken animals may be the result of
poor transition and indicate breeding problems down the road.
A variation of start milk levels between same lactation animals
can also be an indicator of issues with transition.
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