George Whitelock runs his herd’s reproductive policy on a relatively simple ethos- namely that an empty cow gives you far fewer options than on that is in calf.
He has spent the past four years working on maximising his 1150 head herd’s in-calf rate on their property near Palmerston North, incorporating short gestation genetics, CIDR® cattle inserts and once a day milking to give cows every opportunity to cycle sooner, and get in calf earlier.
“The family has grown the herd from Dad’s herd that comprised 60 cows thirty years ago, to 2,500 over 850ha today, between us and him. So that’s been a pretty rapid gain over that time in numbers and the short-term use of CIDRs was one way to help achieve that, getting every cow we could in calf.”
In can be tough country to farm, with heavy wet soils in winter, a high winter rainfall and relentless windy conditions over some of the year across 100ha of floodable country. Lameness is an inevitable issue that can also add to the spring challenge of getting cows back in calf.
Since slicing off his own herd of 1150 from his father’s, George has had the opportunity to fine tune his mating programme and try a few different approaches to optimising the herd’s in-calf rates and calving spread.
Working with Totally Vets, George’s CIDR plan now focuses on his early non-cycling calvers first up, identifying those that have not cycled 42 days post-calving and typically ending up with about 200 head needing CIDRs in the week prior to mating starting. George has also added once a day milking into the mix, putting all his heifers on OAD from early September, and running them OAD right through the season.
He also applied an aggressive OAD policy last year putting all his cows calving after September 5 onto OAD, without compromising production.
Combining OAD with CIDR therapy helped lift the six-week in calf rate from 53% to 74%, again with no production loss and a lot less administration and pressure in the afternoons over the busy calving season.
The use of more short gestation semen in the mating programme has helped widen the period between calving and mating, with cross bred genetics also helping lighten the bodyweight of the herd over time.
“We have had a big improvement over the years with a 10-15% increase in the number of cows holding to CIDRs, that can be up to 50 extra cows, it is a big difference.”
George sees CIDRs as an integral part of good mating management, if not the silver bullet, and his efforts in combining them with less stress in the herd with OAD milking has helped keep their use optimised as he looks to tighten mating patterns, rather than simply build cow numbers.
“CIDRs will always be part of the policy, there is no option with an empty cow. We have had good advice from Totally Vets on using them, and there is not much else I would do differently in their use, you have to stay open minded about their use.”
