Fertility monitoring

What can be measured to monitor fertility?

• calving interval

• pregnancy rate

look at group (heifers, high yilders etc) performance and see if some more effected that others to narrow down ddx

What are the general categories of Key Performance Indicators?

• Conception

• Submission

• Overall fertility

monitor quarterly in all year round (AYR) calving production (seasonal vs All Year Round)

What are the requirements of a good key performance indicator?

• Level

  • High level e.g. Milk / cow /year of life

  • Low level e.g. Pregnancy of an individual animal

  • Directly measured vs Calculated from other data

  • Correlated e.g. milk protein used to assess dietary energy

• Convenience vs Cost of producing the data

How much concentrate to litre of milk would you aim for?

400g/l of concentrates

What is important to assess on a farm visit?

• Animals

  • BODY CONDITION SCORE

  • Type of cow

  • Cleanliness

• Building / environment

• People

  • Capabilities

  • Motivation

What is this showing?

• Bray chart- once round shows 1 lactation

• Can set targets and see if meeting

• Can get linear ones too:

  

How can you monitor fertility in terms of submission?

• Submission rate

  • N° animals served/ N° Eligible/ 3 week cycle

• 1st service submission rate

  • Eligible= All animals after earliest service date who have not yet been served

• All services submission rate

  • Eligible= All animals after earliest service date who are not pregnant

  • May have been served so do not know if were eligible until return to heat or preg diagnosis results

What KPI is this graph showing?

• Calving to 1st service for cows calving in a period

  • Can see outliers which are not on average

What is the voluntary waiting period?

Allow uterus to recover and cow to re start reproductive cyclicity

What KPI can you use to monitor how long it takes to conceive?

• Calving interval for individual —> calving index for herd

  • Too historic

• Calving to conception interval (calving to confirmed service with +ve PD)

  • Produce a predicted calving index

  • gets worse as animals in a group conceive over time (for group)

  • A few problem cows can affect this interval a lot

• Calving to conception spread

  • If conception too early there will be an early drying off, less milk/cow/year

  • If conception too late there will be delay in next peak lactation, less milk/cow/year

  • need to identify very late conception cows to identify problem

What do these graphs show?

top graph —> Calving interval changes 9 months after calving to conception interval

bottom graph —> % served and in calf by X days after calving over a period of time, such as 6 months

Blue line is showing cows in calf over time and red line is showing the cows that have had their first service

(The blue line then going up is also including other services)

What is this graph showing?

• Green area is showing % spread of calving interval under 385 across different farms

• Pink is the farm you are looking at —> Can compare to other farms

What is preg/conception rate?

% Pregnant of those served

No. Preg/ No. eligible to be served/ 3 week

(Combines conception (conception= pregnancy rate) with service)

conception rate = submission rate + success of service

Summarise the physiological events occurring after insemination in cattle- approximate timings

What is this chart showing?

Cu-Sum

• Line moves right (or up) when pregnant and left (or down) when not

If half conceive will get 50%- higher green line, can see at what point it is parallel with blue line, to see where it goes wrong

What has changed on this Cu-Sum?

• Black line gradient changes indicating a change in performace

  • Steeper= worse (more -ve PDs)

  • Flatter= better (no services)

  • Can identify times where something may have changed

What is this graph showing?

• Inter service intervals

  • Ideally expect all cows to be reserved at 18-24 days

  • aim for returns be picked up + reserved

show good performance

(this image show poor performace as miss returns)

What is this graph showing?

Reiterates some of the causes behind possible patterns of returns to service discussed

What is this table showing?

• Separated out into milk yield cf to that expected

• Can see that cows below expected yield have issue with fertility probably due to concurrent illness

• Non return at 35 days means that either PD positive or missed oestrus or not cycling

Time after calving = Duration of negative energy balance (60d follicle growth)

High yielders worse = negative energy balance?

Explain this graph

Simply average calving interval for the cows on the farm

What raw fertility data contributes to KPIs

• Calving date

• Date of insemination

• Result of PD

• Dry off dates

• Culls (ID of cow)

What is this showing?

Submission and pregnancy (by 75d)

• % submitted= served

• Confirmed= PD +ve so conceived

What is this graph showing?

All services- basically just pregnancy rate

So for all milking cows overall about 37% but can see changes in gradient

What is this showing?

Submission and Pregnancy by 100 and 200 days pp

• Submitted= served

• PD= +ve so conceived

If a farmer wants to seasonally calve in spring or autumn will stop at specific date so cows do not conceive outside period they want.

First graph: It is a 100 day submission rate and 100 day in calf rate- target would be 50% (Ideally 100%)

Second graph:

• 200 days after calving is reasonable to carry on serving if calving all year round

All services for their first lactation

What is this showing?

Very good then got very poor (1st lactation good)

• Over two years so disease/ diet etc may have contributed to this? Lots of reasons- ask the farmer what the change was between the two groups

What raw fertility data contributes to KPIs?

• Calving date

• Date of insemination

• Result of PD

• Dry off dates

• Culls (ID of cow)

** See Jo's word document of KPIs

All services- 2nd lactation

What is this showing?

• Less animals so line more variable but about 40% throughout

All services- 3rd lactation

What is this showing

35% then worse but recovered to 30%

This group have a big problem November to March. So what is the difference in management between the groups- ask the farmer

NB: compare the gradient to the red line for the specific time period to interpret the percentage