Ovsynch not wanted here

[Gringo]

I suppose like anything, in the end it comes down to performance. Lots of people do things a million different ways and the dairy industry is no different. Whether or not protocols are dumb'd down or there is a crew that are all multi-tasking isn't the issue. It's the question of "What does success look like?". It's not just repro performance because the question needs to be asked, "At what cost?". The value of a pregnancy varies from herd to herd and isn't one solid number. A 14% preg rate dairy has a lot of value on each and every pregnancy vs a dairy that 30% of their culls are preg.

I'm no fan of Ovsynch. I'm no fan of any synch protocols. I fully believe that an ounce of prevention...... I fully believe that many dairymen have their numbers exactly where they want them, because if they wanted them to be better they'd do something about it. Same is true for me. If cows aren't cycling you have to ask why and then fix that. I don't believe spendy band-aids are the answer nor does the value of a good manager/owner rely solely on how pretty your scatter plot graphs are. My struggle apparently with this topic is speaking the same language.....using the same metrics. Differentiating between preg rates and conception rates. Herd preg rates vs cow preg rates etc. Cows can be managed simply without a pile of cost and complexion....but to have the discussion there has to be commonality of terms as well as general goals. .02

[BLOOMFIELD]

Gringo what heat detection method do you use? I used tail chalk for years but reproduction really improved when I went to an Ovsynch program combined with tail chalk. I don't look at a lot of numbers either except total pregnancies every month.

[Gringo]

Tail chalk.

I had a year of one month less than a 30% preg rate. Since then I've screwed it all up by using a bunch of sexed semen so those numbers have dropped. One thing to consider is when using Ovsynch, no one wants to talk about the shot accuracy rate. Everyone just blindly assumes it's 100%.

[ElJefe]

Carlos is in charge of breeding @ bto dairy. He spends his days giving shots, breeding and watching activity monitors. Juan and Jesus do the milking and regularly see standing heats but its not their job so Carlos never knows about it.....................

Minor quibble.... if Carlos is watching activity monitors, he's going to know which cows Juan and Jesus see in heat. So Juan and Jesus don't have to worry about telling Carlos who is in heat.

[Moses]

Minor quibble.... if Carlos is watching activity monitors, he's going to know which cows Juan and Jesus see in heat. So Juan and Jesus don't have to worry about telling Carlos who is in heat.

Agreed Elfefe. Not all of my cows show heat but the ones that do show up 99% of the time on my heat monitoring system. I recently replaced my collar pedometers with a bolus system that includes body temperature along with activity to give me a more accurate breeding window. Finds all of my clinical mastitis cases too.

[HumidTropics]

Can anyone recommend herd management software, which could later be linked to movement monitors to help heat detection and health monitoring.
Are all of these subscription based, ie annual fees for access to various parts?
I looked at Herdmetrix from Boumatic and their annual sub is over usd700, which is kind of a lot of money. I thought so anyway.
Any suggestions, or are they all much the same in terms of performance and price?

My point is you don't need robots or hormones to have good repro. Yes, a activity monitoring system helps find cows in heat but other factors improve repro also.
We don't feed for production. High roughage to create a healthy rumen. We also don't run holstein cows. We breed with fleckvieh semen and try to improve a cows negatives by using a bull that will offset those negatives and still give us an all around good offspring. We think longevity not volume per day.

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