Taking on the challenge of improving herd fertility

Brothers Wallace and James Hendrie share how they'll improve fertility in their spring block calving herd after reviewing the previous calving season and fertility figures.

Fertility is one of the leading factors affecting the efficiency of any dairy herd. It can account for one of the major costs of production and represents an area where significant improvements can be made. 

As soon as an heifer calf is born, factors that influence her future fertility and whether she gets in calf on time, every time are controlled by the dairy farmer.  Heifer management greatly determines her growth, health, and age at first calving; her first lactation performance, return to oestrus and subsequent mating and conception success can all be influenced early on.

Monitoring herd performance, identifying areas of improvement, and considering selection options can help build a framework to improve fertility across your herd.  Poor dairy herd fertility is recognised as having many consequences, both direct and indirect.  While the first step in reducing unnecessary fertility losses should include an assessment of herd fertility performance, it is important to appreciate that fertility is best appraised as part of the whole farm system.

Brothers Wallace and James Hendrie who farm at Millands, Ayrshire, identified fertility as one of the key areas they need to improve on with their spring block calving herd.

Wallace explains: “One of our key objectives in joining AHDB’s Strategic Dairy Farm programme was to be able to concentrate on the fertility of our herd as a way of a way of increasing output per cow and reducing costs. We want to better understand what we can do to improve our fertility rates and learn as much as we can from the resources that AHDB has to offer. Last year we calved down 73% in six weeks, for management purposes the herd is split over two grazing blocks.  The empty rates differed between the two spring groups, with group A of 320 cows @ 23% and group B of 285 cows at 15%. We hope to get our empty rate to below 10% which is quite an ambitious target.”

Following a review of the 2020 fertility performance of the 600 strong herd, the main drivers leading to good fertility were shown to all be under the targets Wallace and James are striving for, see table 1.

Table 1 key indicators for measuring block calving performance

At the start of 2021, the biggest question on fertility at Millands was what to tackle first and what was going to have the greatest impact on the herd.  As part of the Strategic Dairy Farm programme, the Hendrie Brothers were bold enough to reveal their 2020 fertility records which have been analysed and scrutinised by Dave Gilbert from Dairy Insight, Shropshire who specialises in dairy herd fertility.  Alongside Millands vet, Alan Walker of Armour Vet Group, a plan to reaching targets was set and agreed for the herd for their 2021 spring calving.

Dave highlights ‘Millands 6week in calf rate has scope for improvement and this is the most important issue for the herds long term performance.  Given the current 6week calved rate at 59%, it will require some input to hit a targeted 6week in calf rate of >78% over the next couple of years, but this is achievable’.  Dave also observed ‘looking at key performance indicators it is apparent that both submission rate and conception rate are challenges for the herd at present’.  Table 2 below highlights the findings from Millands and proposed actions working towards improving their fertility.

Table 2, Millands Key performance indicators and action to improve

Following the review of Millands 2020 fertility performance, Wallace and James highlighted a number of areas themselves that need to be tackled going forward.  Firstly, bull fertility; the bulls used were not tested and this left an obvious dent in in-calf rates across cows and heifers where bulls were used.  Wallace investigated the data captured over the previous season, he adds that this could be improved to help with making decisions during the breeding season and for analysis of performance going forward. 

Metabolic profiles were carried out as part of the Dairy Herd Health and Productivity service (DHHPS), run by Alastair Macrae from the Royal Dick Veterinary School, Edinburgh.  Maiden heifer results were very good across all the parameters, the sample of cows tested indicated a lack in ERDP in the diet and suggested that checking for liver fluke is carried out.  More profiles of the spring herd will be carried out over the coming season.