Managing nutrition, heat detection levels and the reproductive cycle are key to improving reproductive performance
Take Home Message: Focus on improving nutrition and heat detection in dairy and beef herds as these account for 60% of the failure in reproductive performance.
Good reproductive performance can be achieved in both dairy and beef herds, even where herd size and production levels have been increased, with the nutritional management, heat detection levels and the control of the reproductive cycle being some of the key areas that require attention to improve reproductive performance.
“And even if these critical areas were not well under control,” the University of Liege’s Louis Istasse told delegates at this year’s British Society of Animal Science annual conference, “tools, technology and skills to bring about progress in these areas, are on their way.”
The overall declining trend for reproductive performance in cattle herds has been occurring for the past 20 years. In Belgium, the pregnancy rate for artificially inseminated herds is decreasing at a rate of about 1% per year.
“And to achieve good reproductive performance, many requisite factors are necessary. Health status, nutritional status or production level are all well known examples,” said Professor Istasse.
Professor Istasse and his team set out to study the impact of health status, production and management on the reproductive performance of a number of Belgian herds.
Back in 2005, 70 vets, all based in Wallonia at the Association Wallonne de l’Elevage, were grouped in 18 units. All were involved in an AI network and monitored the reproductive performance of their herds. This insemination network spread across 9,000 dairy and/or beef herds.
One vet from each unit was questioned during a full working day in order to provide reproduction data which were included in a data base along with the economic parameters.
“Our interviews, and the information we gathered, revealed that the major problems that led to the partial failure in reproductive performance in both dairy and beef herds were poor nutrition and inadequate heat detection – about 30% for each,” said Professor Istasse.
In dairy herds, cysts accounted for 12% of the problems but they can be related also to nutrition. And in beef herds, the third problem was metritis, at 12.6%,” he added.
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