PODCAST: Chatting the next frontier in repro efficiency, Targeted Reproductive Management.
How can dairies reach the next level of reproductive efficiency? The answer has become clear to Dr. Todd Bilby, Director of Dairy Technical Services at Merck Animal Health, and Dr. Ricardo Chebel, professor at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine.
It comes from combining the insights of dairy monitoring with the most powerful reproductive hormones in an approach called Targeted Reproductive Management (TRM). The pair sat down recently to discuss TRM. The Progressive Dairy sponsorcast episode includes the latest reproductive research findings, prostaglandin product comparisons and a cost-benefit analysis of TRM. Some highlights from the discussion:
TRM in first lactation cows
“One thing that we learned from this first experiment was that for first lactation cows, their heat index threshold for a good early postpartum estrus has to be a little higher than the threshold for mature cows,” Chebel said. “So if in mature cows we used a [SenseHub heat index] threshold of 70 from a 0-100 scale, we should be a little higher for first lactation cows, maybe close to 90.”
“When they had a heat index of 90 and they were inseminated in estrus after the prostaglandin, first lactation cows had a similar pregnancy to the double OvSynch or cows that were submitted to the double OvSynch.”
TRM ROI
“With Targeted Reproductive Management, not only is it just reduction in shots, but reduction in lockup times and reduction in labor at which to go give those injections. It’s more than just fewer shots,” Bilby said. “And I think this opens up a real opportunity for producers to continue to extract value from the technology that they put in there and utilize all the data that’s on those farms today.”
“And the automated system really made the cows that were open to first AI be re-inseminated much faster,” Chebel added. “That resulted in an improvement in pregnancy rate that resulted in about $40-$80 more per cow per lactation for the Targeted Reproduction Management group.”
Comparing cloprostenol to dinoprost tromethamine
“The other finding that we thought was very interesting was that the heifers that were treated with cloprostenol actually had a better response than those treated with dinoprost,” Chebel said. “And what we think could have happened is that cloprostenol having a longer half-life, staying in the system for longer, was able to actually have a better luteolytic action on the corpus luteum that don’t respond as well.”
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