Our clients tell us that we help them stay at the top of their game. Better cattle fertility performance ultimately means better yields per cow, improved milk production margins and lower insemination or labour costs. Our fertility service can help you do exactly that.
A. Fertility monitoring
Pregnancy rate or calving to first service interval, monitoring fertility parameters with MilkMonitor(C) will provide us with an early warning system to appraise performance. Whether it is your milk recording dataset or the in-parlour software we can help you dissect and monitor these areas of farm activity that will impact on fertility.
Is it infectious disease stopping the cows from getting back in-calf, are the cows in negative energy balance, can the heat detection method be improved, does our AI technique need refreshing? We can set-up and monitor targets that are suitable to your cows and farm business model.
B. Implanting Embryos
We offer you a non-surgical embryo implantation service for repeat breeders or “Cow Stoppers”. We shall help you select the most suitable recipient cows, synchronise them and implant those embryos. Implantation of embryos to suitably prepared recipients has been shown to have a number of advantages, from improved pregnancy rates to retaining high value genetics within your herd.
C. Pregnancy diagnosis
Early detection of pregnancy allows us an early recognition and early treatment of infertility problems. Implementing a timely diagnostic routine into the breeding protocol could greatly improve the reproductive efficiency, along with improved milk yield margins, fewer culls and reduction in labour and treatment costs.
We can offer you the following types of early pregnancy diagnosis, starting with the old fashioned transrectal palpation, to the widely used transrectal ultrasound and lastly the pregnancy diagnosis for ruminants by blood sample. The advantages of transrectal ultrasound examination is that it offers us the ability to age the foetus from early to mid to late, identify its gender, detect twins or other embryonic abnormalities. Finally, our laboratory diagnostic service BioPD, will help you identify early non-pregnant animals, while minimising stress and waiting times for them.
Our pregnancy diagnosis service can be offered as part of a package or as a stand-alone service. Our clients’ feedback on our stand-alone pregnancy diagnosis service, is that it is priced highly competitively. Contact us for more information.
D. DIY AI Training
If you are looking to improve your herds-person skills and add cattle DIY artificial insemination to your repertoire, our course will help you get there safely and efficiently. Genetic improvement of a cattle herd can have profound benefits on productivity, welfare and farm income. Being able to apply artificial insemination on your own cattle can help you save time and money, as well as speed up your herd’s genetic improvement.
For more information please check out our LANTRA and APHA approved course.
E. Cattle Scanning Training for non-Vets
Introduce further efficiencies on how you manage the fertility of your dairy and suckler herd. Treat the pregnancy diagnosis of cattle as a weekly task, like DIY AI, drying cows off and preventative foot trimming, minimising their waiting time and disruption to their daily routine. Identify which cows are not pregnant early and present those to your vet to treat promptly. Save time and money and while you do all these, you also maintaining your working relationship with your vet!
For more information please check out our LANTRA, APHA and RCVS approved course.
F. Fertility Risk Factors and Prevention
Our many years of clinical experience and problem solving can help you identify and successfully address risk factors on your holding that hold your herd’s fertility results back.
- Our clients benefit from devising breeding plans, by selecting the most appropriate genomic sires that are likely to improve fertility in their offspring.
- We shall work with your nutritionist or produce ourselves diets for your cows, to ensure milk yields and fertility stay at their best.
- Inspect the cow accommodation, appraise and modify the cubicle design, so that it maximises comfort and cow lying times.
- Assist you keep a lid on infectious disease.
- Focus on optimising your heat detection protocol, devise oestrus synchronisation plans, improve your DIY insemination technique or check the soundness of your stock and sweeper bulls.
These can mean only one thing for reproductive performance, the animals and the herd at its peak!