Reproduction Efficiency

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Reproduction Efficiency

Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2

Discussion:.................................................................................................................................3

Importance of the Reproduction efficiency of dairy cattle:...................................................3

2. Work going on in Australia of reproductive efficiency:....................................................5

3. The issues that the Australian dairy industries are not giving importance:.......................6

4. Steps that can implements by the dairy farmers to improve the reproduction efficiency:.6

Reference....................................................................................................................................8

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Reproduction Efficiency

Introduction:

In the dairy farming of Australia, the dairy farmers have to increase the productivity to ensure
the sufficient supply of dairy products in the Australian market. Therefore, it is necessary to
improve the dairy production. In the past 40 years there are been an extensive research going
on the production of the Dairy cows, to improve the production in the Australian market.

This report is focuses on the reproduction efficiency of dairy cattle. By improving this, the
dairy farmers can fulfil the demands of the market. In this project, there are several points
that have been discussed to understand the report better like why the reproduction efficiency
of dairy cattle is important for the Australian dairy industries. Apart from that, what is the
current issue that exists regarding the Reproduction efficiency, what are the unknown issues
of the reproduction efficiency of the dairy cattle and what are the things that should be
applied on the farm to improve the reproduction efficiency.

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Discussion:

Importance of the Reproduction efficiency of dairy cattle:

Many factors determine the efficiency of the dairy herd is the amount of milk is sold per day.
As there are many factors that contribute in the milk that sold per day. However, the
reproductive efficiency or the reproductive performance is one of the major contributors.

In the Australian dairy industries, it is necessary to maintain the daily milk production. In the
dairy cows, it has been seen that the yielding of milks goes high in the first 100-200 days,
later on the lactation goes down. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain the flow of the
production. Therefore, to maintain the production the cow must have to calve on regular
intervals. The reproduction influences in the duration milk production at the first age calving
and it depends on the percentage of time the cows spend in the early months of the lactation.
In the figure1, the lactation curve has been shown. The productions jumps higher in the first
six to ten weeks after the calving and the high level of lactation went high and it was
maintained at the same pace for few weeks. The half of the production of lactation is done in
first 120 days. By this time, the cow generates the highest profit for the dairy. That means the
cow will be at her “break-even point” which means the cost of the production and the revenue
that generates by the milk production, both will be equal. By this it can be understand if the
cow is become pregnant regularly the profit will be higher.

Figure 1: The Lactation Curve

Source: (Morton, Auldist, Douglas and Macmillan, 2016)

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It is important to look into the good reproductive efficiency in the dairy cattle. Moreover,
understand why it is important for the economic performance of the Australian dairy
industries. To measure the performance of the dairy industries it should be understand that
reproductive performance is also required which is measured by the open days of the cattle,
their calving intervals and the conception and the pregnancy rates. If the rate of calving
increases, that means the average days of the milk for the herd will increase as well, which is
not a good thing for the dairy’s as because the longer the herd will be on the average days in
milk, the lower herd average of the daily milk production. As shown in the figure 2

Figure 2: average day milk and the daily milk production

Source: (Cook, Hess, Foy, Bennett and Brotzman, 2016)

If the calving intervals is getting longer that means only few claves will born in the lifetime
of the cow, which will be less productive. If the inefficiency in the reproduction will continue
that means if the production of the milk will be lesser than expected the income of the
Australian dairy industries will be less. If the production rates will be lower that means the
cow will produce less claves in the entire lifetime and the dairy farmers have to replace the
young cow. If the Australian dairy industries want to maximize the herd profitability, the
companies must maintain the high level of the reproductive efficiency (Gunn, D.,
Ahmadzadeh, and Glaze, 2011).

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2. Work going on in Australia of reproductive efficiency:

The Australian dairy industries have focuses on the work of the reproduction efficiency by
the making the genetic strategies to improve the reproduction. Breeding programmes also
includes the fertility and the health as the part of the traits. The Australians dairy industries
are making the genetic discoveries with the help of the Australian government improve the
productivity of the cows or the dairy cattle’s (Morton et. al., 2016). Many opportunities are
arising in front to the dairy farmers to incorporate with the breeding programmes. By the help
of these programmes, they can improve the production of milk. However, if the farmers do
not get proper knowledge about these technologies, the farmers will eventually not get benefit
from it.

New tools have been introduced to improve the fertility among the dairy cattle’s. Like there is
a development in the glycan makers for the uterine health. This glycan can identify the cows,
which are having the retained placental membranes. Apart from that, a study has been shown
that if the cows are getting the enough nutrients then the healthy cow can produce the high
number of lactation. As well as the healthy cow can produce more calves. If the nutrients are
not sufficient to the cows, it can harm the productivity of the cows.

The Australian dairy industries are also focusing on the controlling infectious diseases, which
affect the cow’s health. The veterinarians are helping the diary industries by regularly
checking the cow’s health status. Infections like LEPTOSPIRA HARDJO, herpes viruses or
the viral diarrhoea are very well known for their reduction of the conception rates (Miyama
et. al., 2018). Some virus can affect the pregnancy of the cows’ and lead them to abortions.
Therefore, it is necessary to monitor the healths of the cows and provide the appropriate bio
security plans to prevent these diseases. These diseases can spread to the herd, which will be
dangerous for the whole dairy farm.

Apart from those new technologies helps the farmers to understand the metabolism
mechanism and reproduction criteria of cows in a better way. As there are many cows in the
farm. The companies are putting the sensors as well as the tags to each cow to understand and
make a count of the herds. As the sensors help the caretaker to monitors every step, that the
cow is taken and there is another technology to check if the cow is ready to give birth to the
calves or not. The dairy companies always separate the healthy pregnant cows to one
particular area if the date of delivery is near. As the cows automatically went to the labour

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room, the company can easily locate the cow and help the cow to give birth of healthy calves.
These new technologies help the dairy industries to reduce the risk of the loss of the calves.

3. The issues that the Australian dairy industries are not giving importance:

The Australian dairy industries are getting weak in terms of their income. There are many
new technologies, which have introduced to the farms. However, the farms owner does not
get all the information and the technologies to their farm as a result the dairy owners are not
able to cope up with the demands of the markets. Reproductions are one of the important
factors of the Australian dairy industries. The dairy industries are not sharing the new
technologies to the dairy farmers.

As the milk, production is being decreased due to lack of usage advanced technologies; the
Australian diary industry is going behind in the international market. Due to negligence
about many reproduction method and other advanced technologies, the Australian farmers are
getting affected. Due to improper reproduction and lack of marketing, the farmers do not get
sufficient money for their efforts. This kind financial crisis is also affecting the family of the
farmers and the health of the cows as they are not get enough nutritious food for their diets.
Because of this incident, the cows do not produce enough milk and their metabolism affects
in the reproduction of the calves. The famers as well as Australian Government should take
some initiatives to improve the financial conditions.

4. Steps that can implements by the dairy farmers to improve the reproduction
efficiency:

Many factors can affect the reproduction efficiency of the cows. The farm owners must
understand the relationship between the heat stress and the reproductions. During the first
several days in the pregnancy, the cows are very much vulnerable to the diseases and the
metabolic disorders (Borchers, and Bewley, 2015). Therefore, the farmers must take care of
the cows as these can affect the cow’s reproduction efficiency.

Many of the dairy farmers still use the natural way to produce the calves. Until now many
experiments has been done to improve the reproduction of these cattle. The semen sample of
the male animal can be stored in a normal temperature that it can be kept safe for a long time
(Randi et. al., 2018). Later these secured products can be used for reproduction purpose.
However, the quality should remain good for breeding new good breed. It is the process of

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natural fertilization. Further, Timed Artificial Insemination (TAI) also can be applied to
reproduce cattle. In this technique, the experiments should be done in a timely basis. With
this technology, significant amount of milk can be produced. However, it has some adverse
impacts such as stress due to heat, embryo development (Martin-Collado et, al., 2015).

Embryo Manipulation is another popular technique that can be used to improve pregnancy
rates. Generally, this method is performed during the summer months (Nevoral and Sutovsky,
2017). Embry transfer into lactic cows can increase the milk production. Connectional risk is
about 27% in this process. Various steps are followed in this technique, such as timed
transfer, embryo freezing and lowering the cost of embryos. Sometimes hormonal treatments
ale also practiced to improve the milk production.

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Conclusion

The overall conclusion of the project is that reproduction of diary animals can increase
significant amount of milk productions. The reproduction rate of the diary animal can be
improved by feeding healthy foods. Additionally, various technologies can be applied to
improve the production rate of the diary animal and as a result, the overall production of milk
will increase drastically. The Australian diary industry is one of the biggest suppliers of milk
(after New Zealand) and so they need many alternatives to grow their milk production. To
achieve this goal, the farmers are doing various kinds of experiments such as hormonal
exchange, embryo transfers and semen transfer with their animals. These strategies increase
the milk production up to a certain extent. Due to improper marketing and less production of
milk the financial conditions of the farmers are getting affected. This kind of crisis resulting
the reproduction rate of cows and also effects the milk production. It is further
recommended to feed high-quality supplementary foods to improve their health and as result,
they can produce more milk.

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Reference

Borchers, M.R. and Bewley, J.M., 2015. An assessment of producer precision dairy farming
technology use, prepurchase considerations, and usefulness. Journal of dairy science, 98(6),
pp.4198-4205.

Cook, N.B., Hess, J.P., Foy, M.R., Bennett, T.B. and Brotzman, R.L., 2016. Management
characteristics, lameness, and body injuries of dairy cattle housed in high-performance dairy
herds in Wisconsin. Journal of dairy science, 99(7), pp.5879-5891.

Gunn, D., Ahmadzadeh, A. and Glaze, B., 2011. Effect of duration of progesterone-releasing
device (controlled internal drug-release insert) treatment on reproductive performance in beef
cows. The Professional Animal Scientist, 27(2), pp.147-151.

Martin-Collado, D., Byrne, T.J., Amer, P.R., Santos, B.F.S., Axford, M. and Pryce, J.E.,
2015. Analyzing the heterogeneity of farmers’ preferences for improvements in dairy cow
traits using farmer typologies. Journal of dairy science, 98(6), pp.4148-4161.

Miyama, T., Watanabe, E., Ogata, Y., Urushiyama, Y., Kawahara, N. and Makita, K., 2018.
Herd-level risk factors associated with Leptospira Hardjo infection in dairy herds in the
southern Tohoku, Japan. Preventive veterinary medicine, 149, pp.15-20.

Morton, J.M., Auldist, M.J., Douglas, M.L. and Macmillan, K.L., 2016. Associations
between milk protein concentration at various stages of lactation and reproductive
performance in dairy cows. Journal of dairy science, 99(12), pp.10044-10056.

Nevoral, J. and Sutovsky, P., 2017. Epigenome modification and ubiquitindependent

proteolysis during pronuclear development of the mammalian zygote: animal models to study
pronuclear development. Animal models and human reproduction (ed. H Schatten and GM
Constantinescu), pp.435-466.

Randi, F., Sánchez, J.M., Herlihy, M.M., Valenza, A., Kenny, D.A., Butler, S.T. and
Lonergan, P., 2018. Effect of equine chorionic gonadotropin treatment during a progesterone-
based timed artificial insemination program on reproductive performance in seasonal-calving
lactating dairy cows. Journal of dairy science.