Repro advice from farmers

• Published date: 24 April 2024
• Publication title: Central Rural Life

South Canterbury farmers Hamish and Fiona Winter have a stellar track record for their herd’s reproduction performance. A highlight is an 81% six-week in-calf rate, surpassing the industry target of 78%

When it comes to milk production, their aim is for the cows to do 100kg more than their body weight — around 575kg of milksolids each.

‘‘Last year we did 582kg/MS per cow,’’ Fiona says.

‘‘If we got there every year, we’d be very happy.’’

They share some of their key management practices that help them consistently achieve these impressive results.

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Hamish and Fiona put collars on their cows three seasons ago and haven’t looked back.

‘‘The AI technician from the year before put collars on his own cows,’’ Hamish recalls.

‘‘He put the collars on really late so he had to do scratchies as well. I ran into him and he showed me a scratchie that was completely untouched and asked me if I’d mate that cow. I said, ‘no, probably not’. And he goes, ‘the collars told me that this cow was on heat, and she was absolutely 100% on heat when I did it’.’’

‘‘So that kind of converted us to the collars,’’ Fiona adds.

‘‘You’re always going to get the phantom cows. So that’s what we said — ‘well, there’s one of your phantoms you would never have got’.’’

Before collars, tail paint was used for heat detection.

‘‘Every morning milking I was doing heat detection,’’ Hamish says.

‘‘When I redid their tail paint after they were inseminated, I would write the day of AI in the middle of their back, right up the front, so that the next morning if you saw she’d been ridden again, you’d know that was yesterday. It worked well but that was me every day for seven weeks, which is a lot.

‘‘Now with collars, it’s just so much less workload,’’ Hamish says.

‘‘We’ve got a pretty standard CIDR [Controlled internal drug release] system. We stick a bunch of early CIDRs in before the planned start of mating so that we mate them on day three. Then we have another two drafts of CIDR. On day 24, anything that hasn’t been mated gets drafted out.

‘‘As soon as we put collars on, that was also the end of having any bulls on this farm, which I don’t miss at all.’’

OAD milking after calving

As soon as the cows calve, mating becomes a focus, Fiona says.

‘‘It’s about getting her back. It’s about getting her pumping, recovering from the calving and putting milk in the vat and getting her in good condition and cycling again to get back in calf...