Jeanne - Simme Valley":2yov008o said:
Branded - I think what most are having a hard time "grasping" is your comments about breeding at possibly the wrong timing. First, there is a HUGE window of time to get a cow bred (in comparison to thinking it has to be exact). With your state of the art heat detection system, that evidently tells you when she starts messing around, when she actually stands and when she stops standing. Man, that would be kick butt great to have. I do all the heat checking, with my eyeballs. I do use Estrotect and/or crayon, and mud lines down their sides, and ruffled tail heads, and clear discharge, and perky ears, etc, etc.
I have a tech that comes twice a day. Sometimes at 9 am, sometimes at 11 am for morning heats, than might be ready to come back at 2 pm or 4 pm. Tech is what is "hit & miss" around here. But, we get them AI'd in a 65 day time period - extremely great conception rate. If we breed while they are actively standing, I hit them with GNRH. Which, IMO, you are doing yourself an injustice not to take advantage of hormone tools.
Trust me, I (maybe WE) are jealous of your heat detection system - although I love spending time walking thru my cows and it is good for the temperament of calves.
Jeanne, I am around the cows/heifers a lot, I hand feed them daily. so I can watch them closely, and I also go out and walk amongst them when the weather is decent, which it hasn't been in a long time. I'm not expert at the timing but here is what I look for when determining the heat:
Obviously sniffing and mounting
I like to see a lot of discharge
and then I compare it with the Moo Monitor. The monitor is a machine and it can have errors, for example, when I drop in a new hay bale into the ring and it has been a night of heavy rain or really cold, the cows can get pretty vigorous in their eating and make their alert go off, but it's usually over in an hour or less and I know for sure it's a false alarm. However, when I see the two things above and I get an alert like this below:
Then it's game on. You may think this is not correct, but ask Ron, we have been having some crazy weather. It could be 55 one day and pouring rain, then to 20, then back to 60 the following day, it has caused the heats to be strange across the entire group I have collars on, which is right at 40. One is an anomaly, the whole group is a trend.
Here is the ideal setup, from my observations with the Moo Monitor data. When the temps drop to 15-20 degrees and it's dry and they are comfortable, the heats can easily last 18-24 hours, but what I'm seeing across the group are heats that last 12-14 hours and are sometimes "light" and hard to detect. You wouldn't know it if you were casually watching from the truck and they were out in the field. You might see a little bit of sniffing, but not raging heat.
If you look at the chart, this heifer started getting warmed up for the heat when the rumination dropped (horizonatal green line), then she ramped up. We bred this one early because our guy had to get out of here early, but had we waited to the following morning, she would have been over at about 8:00 a.m. So all in all, around 7:30 p.m. to 8:00 the next morning. Pretty normal, but short. One thing I have found because I use sexed semen frequently and we are successful with it, is that where you see that green rumination line make a "v" is where you need to AI them. That is THE SWEET SPOT! In this case it would have been the middle of the night. Hence my remarks. Before or after that spot and your conception rates drop. I have the data to prove it so does Dairymaster/Moo Monitor in Ireland. They have confirmed the data with other beef producers who use this system in Europe.
As for being fancy, come over some time and see my totally sh..t fence, barns, etc. Our pennies go into the cattle and the system, not vanity items. I figure niceties can come much later. Way later at that. People crack jokes about the system all the time, but I drive an old rusty truck, and the people that are cracking jokes are driving new trucks. I think this system will return more than a truck will, just my opinion. Also, most cattle producers would NEVER share this information with anyone, they would guard it, we don't see things like that, we have tried to get Dairymaster more business in the area, and have been very open about what we are doing. Dairymaster told us that as of 2018 we were the only beef herd in North America to use it, most of the systems they install are for dairy. It's not the only one in Kentucky, the University of Kentucky uses it for dairy, and several other operations, but nobody else on a beef herd.
One more thing this does beside heat detection, and a feature that I value it highly for, is that it can tell you if a cow is sick in VERY short order. Last summer, one of our top cows must have gotten into something and she had brutal diarrhea. She is a big cow and under the shade trees she looked fine, she moved fine, but she was very sick. We brought her in within 30 minutes of the alert, the vet came out, and she, in fact, was in bad shape, a long time seasoned vet, he said "cows can go quickly with this in 95 degree weather, good thing you were able to get her up". Without the system, I would have seen it, but this allowed me to see it very quickly and get medicine in her. Losing her would have been a decent chunk of what the system cost, so I think it's making sense for us. I can also spot foot injuries with it as well. It watches them like a hawk 24/7.