With last week’s beef breeding focus supplement whetting the appetite for 2018’s breeding season, we now look at steps and considerations that farmers should take in the next few weeks to get the most from it. Reproductive efficiency is hugely important on beef farms, and often not afforded the attention it deserves. The problem is that for most, the first inkling of sub-par reproductive performance comes at scanning time when it’s too late to fix from within the farm.
Breeding is less than a month away for most suckler farms and it’s time to start getting the ducks in a row. The first question to ask is ‘am I calving at the right time?’ Granted, there was no right time to calve in spring 2018, but look back across the last five or 10 years. Are you set up to calve at the time you want to calve? By this I mean creep areas and housing for young calves and cows. If even decent springs have been tough to handle, could you afford to pull your average calving date back a week or so?
For those looking to market a weanling in the back end, such a choice might represent valuable lost kilos, but for those wintering their calves there is opportunity to make up this weight gain elsewhere, via genetics and feeding principally.
For me, a young calf trying to suck dirty quarters on a cow standing looking into a ring feeder for a month waiting for grass to grow or the ground to harden is not doing anyone any good.
It’s a question worth asking yourself – what would a later calving date mean here? On many farms, a later average calving date might not do anything to the average age of calves at sale if certain steps are taken.
Just look at the typical calving spread – if a farmer was to start calving slightly later, but try and pull in his straggler cows at the end of calving, there could be little or no effect on age at sale. Indeed, a more uniform bunch could give him more power in the ring.
In truth, many farmers will find their calving dates pushed back slightly in 2019 regardless. Why? Just look at the run-in much of the country’s suckler herd is having to breeding season. Feed is scarce, and diets are changing regularly as farmers try and keep feed in the trough using whatever ingredients are available.
Cows are cooped up indoors when they should be out with the sun on their backs mopping up leafy spring grass. A cow’s reproductive system is controlled by a hormonal feedback mechanism. In times when feed energy is scarce, a cow’s system will pick up on dwindling fat reserves and put her reproductive system into standby – deciding it is not the time for her to try and support a pregnancy as her environment lacks the necessary nutrients.
This is the main reason we measure body condition score on our cows. The key is to try to lose as little fat reserve as we can between calving and breeding to optimise fertility. This is largely breed-dependent – an animal with dairy genetics will be at more of a risk of losing fat than a Charolais cow.
Good chance
That said, there’s a good chance that all types of cows on farms where fodder has been rationed in recent weeks are under pressure. The one saving grace might have been fodder stretcher rations in these animals’ diets which will have bolstered energy supply and helped prevent condition loss.
On some farms feeding fodder stretcher rations to cows as a means of stretching silage, I have heard of more pre-breeding activity than normal among cows. This will have been down to a little energy kick from the concentrate supplement and this shows just how important energy in the diet of a suckler cow post-calving actually is.
Rising plane of nutrition
We need cows on a rising plane of nutrition for the weeks prior to breeding. In an ideal scenario, cows would be grazing in proper rotations on good grass for three to four weeks prior to breeding. That is probably not going to happen this year, and we should be bridging this gap with concentrate feeds. Many farmers will be sick of feeding concentrates at this point, but what we offer to cows pre-breeding might be the most cost-effective of all.
Rewind to the present day. Many farms are in the midst of or at the tail end of calving. The cows calving now are the ones we cannot afford to let slip any further. Take a note of whether these cows are clean after calving.
A pre-breeding scan is something many farmers undertake, but I prefer splitting into two scans – a pre-breeding scan on late-calving cows and a mid-season scan on early-calvers that have not yet shown heat when they in theory should have.
We are potentially making a small saving on numbers scanned in this way and have time to intervene and for any early cows that require it.
When we’re doing our pre-breeding scan take out any lame cows and examine and treat as necessary
Late-calvers are late for a reason, there’s an argument that a pre-breeding scan is even overkill for these – fertility being heritable. In theory, by keeping late calvers in the herd, particularly ones that need a pre-breeding scan to sort issues, we are selecting for infertility. But, there’s a counter argument, perhaps a stronger one too, that says we take every pregnancy that we can get.
When we’re doing our pre-breeding scan take out any lame cows and examine and treat as necessary. A lame cow eats less and will subsequently lose condition – not a good outcome from a reproductive point of view.
If our cow is an engine and the feed we give her is fuel, minerals and vitamins are the nuts, bolts, engine oil, coolant, belts – parts without which she would not function.
The table outlines the minerals and vitamins that our cow needs to get daily on top of her feed. Certain minerals are particularly crucial for fertility. There are a number of ways of getting these into our cow and all have pros and cons. We can use boluses for example.
The pros of these being the peace of mind that once inserted, we know our animals is getting what she needs. The obvious con is the effort required to get them into our cow. Mineral lick buckets are cheap and cheerful but, contrary to popular belief, cows will not self-regulate for all minerals and typically often only visit these buckets for the sweet taste of molasses.
Indeed, some cows are not fans of these buckets and don’t visit at all. This has huge negatives from a fertility mineral point of view but more pressing issues from a grass tetany prevention point of view – a dead cow is a lot worse than one not cycling. Water-borne mineral systems can work extremely well. However, they’re expensive and visits for water will reduce in times of very wet weather. Again, this is probably more of a problem from a tetany point of view than fertility.
Magnesium
A good magnesium nut product will contain all of the minerals that we need and kill a second bird by getting extra energy into the diet and a third by facilitating herding/AI by getting our cattle into one place when we want them.
However, there’s the obvious expense of buying feed and the logistics around feeding it out – land is under enough pressure without poaching ground around troughs in parts of the country. For me, farmers should be picking two of these measures as tetany preventers and, in doing so, will be indirectly supplementing the minerals we require if the mix is right. Check the labels on the products we are using against the table and take into account feeding rates relative to the rates on labels.