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Timed Breeding Saves Labor And Improves Genetics

published: April 10th 2010
by: Duane Dailey
source: University of Missouri Extension

BOONVILLE, Mo. – The first question was easy after a talk at the Cooper County Cattlemen’s Association meeting. “You mean that if I have a job in town, I can breed all of my cows on one day?”
    “Yes,” said David Patterson, University of Missouri Extension beef specialist. Cattle producers can artificially inseminate all of their cows in a single morning. Producer also can pick the day, such as a day off work.
    Synchronized breeding eliminates need for the month-long job of heat detection, checking cows three times a day because there is no work finding which cows are ready to be bred.
    Synchronized breeding offers much more than convenience, Patterson told the 40 producers, March 30, at the Cooper County Youth Fair Grounds.
    “When you use timed artificial insemination, you cut work at calving time,” Patterson said. While not all calves are born on one day, they will arrive within about 10 days. “That reduces the time spent checking cows at night.”
    There are more advantages, Patterson said. “Synchronization facilitates TAI but also allows more cows to conceive earlier in the breeding season.”
    In field demonstrations across the state, with 7,000 cows in some 70 herds, the conception rate on the first day of the breeding season averages 62 percent,” Patterson said.
    Most cows missed on the first breeding day are bred in their next heat, 21 days later. That concentrates more than 90 percent of the cows into a three-week season.
    Research at the MU Thompson Farm, Spickard, Mo., shows that TAI steadily moves average calving dates earlier each year, even in a well-managed herd artificially inseminated for years.
    Those extra days early in the season means more pounds of calf at weaning time. That’s where financial rewards of synchronized breeding begin.
    Patterson said TAI allows owners of even small cow herds to use the top bulls in the nation available through AI stud services that sell semen. Those bulls have proven records on traits that are needed in a cow herd.
    “When we go to a farm to plan a breeding demonstration, we ask, ‘Which bull do you want to use?’
    “Too often the answer is, ‘My neighbor has a good-looking bull that he paid a lot of money for. We’d like to collect his semen,’” Patterson said.
    “Not a good answer,” he added quickly. “If you go to the time and trouble to synchronize and AI your cows, use the tested bulls with proven records with high accuracy.”
    Bringing better genetics to the farm increases the value of the calves, and eventually the cow herd.
    MU researchers have led the nation in perfecting breeding protocols for heifers, which always have been more difficult to breed, Patterson said.
    “We now have a 14-day protocol that has been accepted nationally for use with heifers. The protocol, ‘Show-Me Synch,’ can jump-start pre-pubertal heifers.
    “The protocol uses a CIDR (controlled internal drug release), a vaginal insert containing the natural hormone progesterone which controls the breeding cycle,” Patterson said. The CIDR protocol replaces MGA, a synthetic hormone that imitates progesterone.
    MGA is mixed in feed rations. This protocol is more uncertain in delivering the correct dosage than the insert.
    A comparison study with more than 400 heifers at Circle A Ranch at Lineville, Iowa, showed that CIDR brought 92 percent of heifers into heat, compared with 85 percent when fed the MGA ration. This ranch had long success getting heifers to eat the right amount of MGA ration. First-time users of MGA rations are rarely that successful.
    “You just get a lot more for your buck when using the CIDR protocol,” Patterson said.
    Approved TAI protocols for 2010 are included in the back of all AI stud catalogs, Patterson said. “Just make sure you are looking at the current protocols. They change year to year.”