There are a lot of ways to try to optimise your cows getting back in-calf as quickly as possible. 

Firstly, make sure your herd is on a rising plane of nutrition. For a nutritional consultation, get in touch with us. Make the most of our vet Marjan, who is a registered nutritionist, before she leaves for her new role! 

Then look into their trace elements levels, especially copper, magnesium, selenium, and iodine. We can take some blood and liver samples for testing to see if they are deficient in anything. It’s important to get copper supplementation sorted sooner rather than later, as the copper injection does decrease conception rate for a couple of weeks after administration. 

Is the uterus ready to maintain another pregnancy? It’s a big ask for an organ to go from containing about 100L volume (including a living fetus) to being ready to conceive again in just a couple of months, but that is what we ask of our cows. Metrichecking is the best way to identify any post-calving infections and treat them. The ideal time to check is 10-14 days following calving. We recommend checking the whole herd, which can be done in batches. Book us to come metricheck!

As we approach mating, identifying non-cycling cows is very important to be able to increase your 3-week submission rate. A key way to maximise your number of days in milk and cows in-calf is to achieve a great 3-week submission rate. 

Track whether cows have cycled automatically with wearable technology, or by tail painting at least three weeks prior to your planned start of mating. Once you know the cows that have not had a visible heat, we can help you make a plan depending on the number of non-cyclers, their ages, and the length of time since they calved. 

The industry target is to serve 90% of the herd in the first three weeks. Working off a conception rate of around 50% this should give you an in-calf rate of around 45% at three weeks, following on to a 77% 6-week in-calf rate. 

As well as intervening with non-cyclers, you can also manipulate cycling cows to achieve these submission rates and more days in milk next season. ‘Why Wait’ is a PG programme that causes the cows that would cycle in week two of mating to cycle during week one of mating, and cows that would cycle in week three to cycle during week two. This only works on cows that have had a pre-mating heat. 

Something to consider: there is a growing trend of short gestation genetics being used to consolidate the calving period, from the same length mating period. This certainly has its advantages by giving more time for the cows to get back in calf, generally smaller calves leading to fewer calving issues, and more days in milk overall. This does require AI at the end of mating, which does not necessarily work with all farm set ups, and it will deliver calves thick and fast, so farm systems and infrastructure need to be ready for this.

For more info on reproduction and maximising performance, please give us a ring – let’s discuss your repro numbers and goals together.