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A well planned calving season is, more often than not, a successful calving season.
For many farmers, the Moocall calving sensor is key at calving time - but did you know it can be even better at if you use it with our Breedmanager app?
Ahead of a busy spring calving season, here are just a few advantages you can have when you use the app and the device in tandem.
Welcome back, we are continuing in our series on the reproduction cycle of the cow.
In my last post we brought our cow through from just having given birth back to normal conditions to begin cycling again.
Now it’s time to discuss how that works and see what’s going on beside mounting all over the place flattening grass.
There are quite a few names going to be tossed around so here’s a quick reference if you need it:
Oestrus-the actual heat event
Estradiol-what makes the cow show all the signs of heat
Corpus Lutuem (CL)- The yellow body formed after ovulation
Corpus Albicans- the white remains of a regressed CL
Graafian Follicle- what the egg is stored in from birth to the heat it matures in
Prostaglandin (PGF2α)- the hormone that resets the cycle by regressing the CL, found in Estrumate and similar products
Heat detection is one of the most important tasks in any cattle system.
Whether it’s beef or dairy, farmers need to play close attention during their breeding season to keep their calving compact.
Visual detection can only go so far and particularly as the season draws on, there are plenty of other jobs to do over watching for signs of mounting twice a day.
While some farmers prefer to not engage in active heat detection and leave it to a stock bull, you are taking a risk by not monitoring your herd closely.
Artificial insemination is becoming increasingly popular as stock bull genetics can only go so far.
While AI companies are constantly improving at the cutting edge of genetic progression and with recent Irish programs stipulating a 4 or 5 star rating for a sire, a stock bull is becoming a less attractive option.
Busy farmers have numerous options available to aid heat detection and increase submission rates.
If you are a Moocall owner and don’t have one of these, you should!
Why, you ask? Well here are four good reasons to get your hands on the new red rubber for the Moocall calving sensor:
It’s tricky enough to get a cow in calf, and [...]
A liver fluke is a parasitic worm that commonly lives off cattle, sheep and other livestock.
Cattle can pick them up while out at pasture, and if not treated can drastically affect their performance, and cause liver damage.
The disease they cause is called fasciolosis. Cattle typically develop chronic disease and classically show loss of weight, condition and become anaemic.
Calving time can be the most intense period of a farmer’s year.
Keeping a close eye on first calvers, getting calves their colostrum, keeping a vet on speed dial and all the while sleep becomes scarce as you aim to flatten your labour spend.
What if there was a way to get more time?
Well sadly, you can’t. We all have 24 hours in a day, and 7 days in a week.
So the real question becomes how can you use your time better? Here are a few ways you can improve your time management in calving season.
As the beef and dairy industries get more competitive, farmers are finding it harder to maintain existing margins, let alone improving on them.
However, there are measures you can take, even as soon as calving, to greatly improve your calves performance.
Here are 5 ways that good calf management can help maximise your margins
Scours are the greatest cause of of poor growth and calf mortality in dairy and suckler herds, and for this reason farmers should always be on the lookout.
While scour in calves is curable, prevention is much better. Luckily, there are measures you can take to stop it from taking hold in your herd.
Bovine Neonatal Pancytopenia (BNP), or Bleeding Calf Syndrome, is a highly fatal condition that can affect newborn calves.
As the name suggests, the symptoms of this disease are bleeding from skin, mucal membranes, and sometimes the intestines.
It only affects young calves, who are under four weeks old, and mothers are usually completely healthy.
While it is deadly to the calf, the disease is carried by the cow, and the symptoms are contracted through her colostrum.
