Calving has just finished and mating has come around too quickly. Since most of the production is done in the first part of the milking season a condensed calving pattern will stay the goal for years to come. For a successful mating season heat detection and submission rate are the key. The recording of premating heats a month before the planned start of mating is a great tool to see how you are going, it becomes simple arithmatic to calculate a prediction of the three weeks submission rate before you will actually get there. You can decide early if you need to intervene to meet the target (like using CIDRs for example). Once you have done 3 weeks of mating and your submission rate was too low or your submission rate was on target but your returns too high, you have to decide if it was a cow or a heat detection problem.
Newsletter – October 2022
