Ploughbright Delite and Ploughbright Daywinner,
two of Sally Yearbury's this season AB calves.
Members' Questions
Sally Yearbury raises the questions so many of us need answered about
AB...Artificial Breeding or AI..Artificial Insemination
BACKGROUND Over the years many people have asked me about mating cows
and heifers to AB and how can you pick them up when they are ready to mate.
The responses here are a personal point of view from my own experience
after a lifetime of mating literally thousands of cows,
heifers and yearlings to AB while dairy farming. I have also always mated my own
Australian Lowlines to AB, not ever having run a bull with my stud cows.
QUESTION: Why do you use AB instead of the easier option of running a bull?
ANSWER: When using AB you can source a wider range of genetics
using two to three or more bulls across your cows in one season.
There may be a number of reasons why you would use particular bulls
across particular cows.
To improve a trait,or an out cross of bloodlines are some of the reasons.
You need to do your homework and find out as much as you can about AB bulls
available and how they will cross with your cows.
If possible view all bulls you plan on using.
Because collecting semen from a bull is not cheap,
superior bulls with better breeding traits and proven records, are collected.
For most people running a bull is easier, but it does limit your genetic pool.
A single bull's influence on a herd especially
if he has major faults takes many years to rectified.
Therefore you must source the best bull you can to suit your cows
and don't just use anything that has four legs and 'should do the job'.
Plan well ahead, which means months in some cases. Do your homework.
Get all the information you can on bulls available.
Check all the advertisements for semen in ALCA Journals. Go back years if need be.
Contact people, talk to people.
QUESTION: Where do I have semen stored and what about contacting a technician?
ANSWER: Once you have decided to do AB, find the nearest AB storage centre to you.
Find out their charges for storing semen and ask them to give you contact to
an AB technician in your area.
Best advice. If possible contact a technician who does a dairy run.
Like a number of things the more you do the better you are at it.
Dairy AB technicians can do up to a hundred cows a day or more and most
have many years of experience.
An AB centre is where semen is collected from all breed of bulls and stored
and where semen is imported and exported from.
You can make arrangements with your AB centre to have semen transferred
from another centre to your storage with them.
When you have decided when you want to start your AB mating.
give your technician plenty of advance notice so he can have your semen
stored in his nitrogen bank. If you are not able to get the services of a technician and your vet is to do the inseminations give them full details of where your semen is stored well in advance.
QUESTION: I have never seen my cows in season?
When do I know they are ready for AB?
ANSWER: By observation, observation, and observation!
There are two ways to pick up cows for AB mating.
It is up to the individual, which method fits your farm routine the best.
You can contact your vet to have your cows synchronised using CIDRs
and drugs to have them all come in season on the same
day and therefore have them inseminated all at the same time.
This is convenient if you are working off farm and/or
have long distances for technicians to travel to inseminate your cows.
Your vet will work out a programme for your cows
and between you both you will be able to work out the time frame to suit everyone
for the insemination to be done.
The second method, which I have always used is more cost effective
but requires a bit more of your time with observation and keeping good records.
That is to pick up cows, heifer or yearling heifers
as they come in season naturally in their own time.
Your technician needs to live handy and be available at an hour or two notice.
The key to picking up cows naturally is to observe them.
Seventy-five percent of females will be at a standing heat stage early
in the morning, the other twenty-five percent in the evening.
Moving your females each day to a new break of feed
makes it easier as they will be waiting for you in the morning and socialising amongst themselves which is when an in season female will stand to be mounted by herd mates.
DON'T move them until you have spent a few minutes
just standing and watching what is going on.
Once you move them they will be distracted and more interested in feeding and not continue with mounting until after you have gone. Outsiders in a group with no peers, often heifers, need to be watched as they may try to mount another female but nobody is interested in them even though they are in season. The smaller the number of females in a group the more vigilant you need to be. Just the change from normal behaviour, calling out, trying to ride another female or clear mucus discharge may signal being in season. With one or two animals just knowing them well helps.
Once I pickup a cow ready for AB I ring my technician.
Cows on in the morning are inseminated sometime later that morning;
they can be left to early that evening but no later.
Cows in season in the evening are left until the next morning.
There are a number of mating aids, which some people find useful.
Tail paint, which is painted on the top of the tail
and rubbed off when a cow is mounted, also mating strips, which work in the same way.
Personally, I have found them a distraction as they can get damaged when animals rub under hedges or are accidentally mounted.
From calving onwards I watch all females.
Depending on their body condition and the feed available, some cows will cycle again within a month, some may take three months.
You can have late cycling cows synchronised to hurry them up so they aren't late calvers the next season.
When I start AB mating, I check females morning and evening for a few minutes each day. Keeping records from calving, I know when to expect a cow to come in season, which will be in a regular pattern from an eighteen to twenty-one day cycle
depending on the individual cow.
On average 70% of cows will hold in calf to the first round of AB.
(That seems standard for all breeds of cows after decades of AB use.)
For most people it is convenient to run a bull after the first round of AB.
If you don't want to do that you will have to watch for cows
returning from AB for a second mating.
I have found my Lowline females will be in calf by then.
QUESTION: What facilities do I need for AB?
ANSWER: Don't contemplate AB work unless you have a yard with a service race.
Don't expect a technician to work with a cow shoved in a hedge
or behind a paddock gate.
I find when AB is finished for the season it is great to look forward to next seasons calving to view new calves whose Dads are often many thousands of miles away.
Sally Yearbury
2009 ALCA Journal
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