High milk yield and good fertility is possible

THE best performing UK herd on fertility (according to NMR data) is producing 13,016 litres of milk per cow, disproving the fact poor fertility is linked to high yield, said Warwick Bastard of Model Nutrition Dairy Consulting.

He talked through data from the top five UK herds, picking out trends while keeping the identity of each anonymous.

“The main emphasis of all these herds is to get all cows bred as early as possible and not allowing cows to get over 80 days in milk without being served,” he said.

Getting in calf

“The use of ovsync at an early stage on cows which have not been seen cycling makes a major contribution to ensuring cows get in calf early.”

In addition, all five herds were focused on age at first calving, he said, adding the average of the five was 764 days (around 25 months) with the lowest achieving 720 days (24 months).

Another common point was an emphasis on cow comfort, especially for dry cows, and ensuring easy access to feed. Providing enough feed face for housed stock was a common theme among many of the speakers and Mr Bastard said all five farms took it seriously with the farm with cows in three-row sheds having an outside feeding area to compensate for the lack of inside feed face.

Vaccination

Four of the five herds (those which provided management information) said they had comprehensive vaccination programmes - all jabbing for IBR and leptospirosis, three for BVD and two for salmonella. All four also screen for both neospora and Johne’s disease and, interestingly, are all clear.

While Mr Bastard could not comment on this directly, he said it did raise the question of the impact disease could have on fertility.

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