Cogent Breeding has launched a first-of-its-kind fertility management software to help farmers improve reproductive performance at Livestock Event 2014.
Current users of the system have reported significant reductions in days to conception (down by an average of 15 days), and improvements in 21-day pregnancy rates by an average of 4% within the first six months of use.
Called Precision Reproductive Solutions, the new service can be used in conjunction with its heat-detection system PinPoint.
Using the smart device, farmers and AI technicians can record essential information for individual cows such as:
- Calving date
- Fertility issues
- Heat events during voluntary waiting periods (VWP)
- Insemination details
- Fertility treatments such as Ovsynch or PRID programmes
- Medicine use
- Vet visits
- PD results
The service provides individual cows with colour-coded cards to make it simple to use:
- Amber cows are still in their VWP
- White cows are open
- Red cows are ones that have passed their service deadline
- Blue cows are pregnant
- Yellow cows are dry
- Black ones are ones that do not breed
It can be tailored to individual farms to help them achieve and monitor breeding targets, and can also be linked up to the World Wide Mating Service (WMS) to ensure cows are being mated to the correct bull.
The cloud-based software enables information to be transferred to and from third parties such as vets, nutritionists and milk recording agencies.
Calves born can also be recorded on the system and the information can be sent direct to BCMS and breed societies for registration to avoid duplication.
The programme also produces several “report suites” and can alert farmers to cows due to calve, cows that need to be seen by the vet for PD or health checks, and cows that need a fertility treatment or AI service.
It works by flagging up cows that are overdue to calve, cows less than 55 days in milk (DIM) not showing heat and those at 70 DIM that haven’t been AI’d so they can be presented to the vet for PD or a health check.
Speaking to Farmers Weekly at the Livestock Event, precision development manager Michael Halliwell said: “We can work with vets to select which breeding protocols farmers should use, and the software tells you when fertility treatments are next due by sending a text alert to your phone. It really saves farmers huge amounts of time.
“We can also produce reports at any time so farmers know where they need to move their focus.”
He added: “We’ve really developed this programme to take out data duplication that exists on most farms and it can tailored to be a one-stop point of entry for data.”
Fees are based on a per cow, per annum basis, according to the level of input required.
By Rhian Price