Learn the perfect way for timely heat detection in your cattle herd
The heat synchronization consists of modifying the oestrus cycle’s length or inducing oestrus. It allows one to choose the day and the time of the artificial insemination as well as the calving period. For cattle, there are many advantages to successfully synchronize the oestrus:
1. It allows a group of cows in heat to be gathered on a given day to inseminate them all at the same time.
2. It eases heat detection.
3. It allows a better scheduling of delivery of calves (better calving surveillance, decrease in birth mortality, and more homogeneous calves).
4. It allows a decrease in unproductive periods by controlling the post-partum sub-oestrus, especially in dairy cows.
5. It allows one to choose the milk production peak during a period when the milk income/market price is higher.
Here is what to do to help your cows come on heat naturally without injecting hormones:
1. Male effect: After a confinement period for the heifers or cows, the introduction of a bull or a castrated but androgenized male induces an increase in LH’s peak frequency and amplitude, i.e. ovulation and an increase in heat behavior.
2. Group effect: Breeding heifers in groups induces an earlier puberty and oestrus gathering.
3. Flushing: In dairy cows, fertility depends on body fat before reproduction. Flushing consists of increasing the feed’s energetic level in order to compensate for an insufficient feeding level or a bad body shape. Practically on cows without enough body fat, more feed for three weeks before and after AI increases fertility and reduces embryo mortality.
Another method of heat synchronization is hormonal treatment…
