An interesting article

[Fire Sweep Ranch]

This article came across my feed today, and in a timely manner.
http://digitaled.cattlenetwork.com/Febr ... =undefined

It is new research that is discovering reasons for early embrionic death, genetically. It is timely because I had a 3 year old angus cow come into standing heat yesterday morning, after being AI bred for 99 days. I have beat myself up trying to figure out what went wrong, but in essence will never know. She has quickly gone from a September calver to a (hopefully) December calver. The embryo implants at around 70 days, so did it never implant, and it just took her awhile to cycle back? Also, we had a recip that came back in, after reaching 48 days bred. We put another embryo in her and she is 49 days pregnant today. I had a heifer that we AI bred for the first time, who normally cycles at 19 or 20 days, but came in at 23 days post her first AI attempt. Was that early embrionic death, or just a late cycle?
Most people do not watch their cattle heat cycles like we do. If a cow checks in as late, or even open, most never question. This research may shed some light on early embrionic death, and, in the future, make attempts to avoid some of it!

 

[ANAZAZI]

Nothing new under the sun. By measuring the bulls own fertility as AI success rate, we have long ago identified those bulls free of deleterious alleles that cause embryonic death loss. By "we" I refer to the breeding organisations for the nordic breeds of dairy/dual Ayrshire type. This data collection has been done for decades already. The thing is if a bull is free from, or has few such alleles, it does not matter much if the cow has them, so by using bulls with high AI success rate, these genetics have become very scarce in these breeds. This method does not identify each gene, but on the other hand it works equally well for identified and not identified alleles.
Kind of like when you inbreed a bull to a number of his daughters to identify carriers of certain syndromes like snorter dwarfs or CVM, you know a clean bull is clean for all deleterious alleles. If you test a bull for a specific syndrome you know nothing about what else he carries. :2cents:

 

[Quigly]

Implantation occurs around day 35 in cattle. Embryonic loses from implantation disorders generally results in the cow recycling around day 40-43 of gestation.

Average cycle length in heifers is 20 days, but 23 could still be a normal cycle.

 

[inyati13]

Good read. Hey, that second article on "Good Microbes" is interesting too.

 

[inyati13]

Implantation occurs around day 35 in cattle. Embryonic loses from implantation disorders generally results in the cow recycling around day 40-43 of gestation.

Average cycle length in heifers is 20 days, but 23 could still be a normal cycle.

I could not find a reference on cattle. In humans, implantation of a fertilized ovum (conceptus) is most likely to occur between 6 and 12 days. Note: This is a complicated subject because you have to define what is "implantation". Complete implantation is when all tissue connections are developed. Which takes longer.