Like many events this year, unfortunately due to the “C” word, we had to cancel our annual Repro Round up and Winter seminar night.
For many, this is an event to mainly get off farm and have some good laughs with neighbours and friendly vet. Although we can’t get that much needed catch up back, we can still give you a summary of the repro performance from the 2019-20 season.
As seen in the graphs below, it was a mixed bag of results for the season. For an average across all of the VetSouth farms, when comparing against the season prior, we had a decrease in the 3 week in calf rate (3WICR) by over 1% and an increase in the 6 week in calf rate (6WICR) by roughly 0.5%. This reduction will represent some slightly later calving cows in the beginning but then they will catch up later on.
It is slightly disappointing to see the 3WICR drop for the second successive year, however this can potentially be forgiven due to the very wet spring and lack of feed around during that time. If it wasn't for the awesome autumn and then subsequent winter, it was panning out to be a very bad season for grass growth.
However, it is really promising to see a reduction in the average ‘Not in calf rates’ (NICR - similar to empty rate) by 0.9%. On top of this the average mating length has decreased by 1 day to be 75 days on average. Dropping the overall NICR and reducing the mating length at the same time is a great result on all accounts.
As always, there is huge variation between individual farms within these results. Where does your farm’s repro performance sit? Are you above or below average for your region? Regardless of your result, if you wish to improve on your performance, get in touch with your KeyVet and they can delve deeper using Infovet to find out which areas to focus your improvements on. As always, good luck for the upcoming mating season, and we hope to be presenting further improvements the following year!
- Dan Cragg
