Timed breeding

[Hay Feeder]

Has anyone done any timed breeding this year? What are your experiences? This was the first time for me. I should of started two or three weeks earlier. Figuring out the ones that did not settle will put them back to April calving. Something I failed to figure when starting the project. I was two busy tring to get labor to help the days with the project
and trying to project weather.
Looked like the cows were in heat and several riding and semen was this years collection from a nationally known AI firm. One of the company techs did the breeding. We will see. Just hope my new yearling cleanup bull is not very busy in a few days.

 

[Hoop]

We have used timed breeding the last few years. What protocol do you use? I think after doing this a few times I'm finding that the nutrition level of the cow is important, seems to work best if they have a few weeks of grass in them and a BCS of 5+. It also helps to have good disposition for settling. One year we did this and we had to short hay as we were running low in april our rate was around 50%. This year heifers were on sorghum sudan silage bales and 3# of soy/corn out of 12 only had 1 return, on cows around 75% but won't really know till calving.

 

[Hay Feeder]

I used the 7 day cow synch.Cows were in real good condition. Fed four pounds of 20 percent range cubes for one week before and the nine days in the project time. Project was on a lease pasutre a few miles from the house so had to use portable correl (not a very good deal for three times though the chute in this protical).

 

[rjn5097]

We try a little of everything...

We timed AI'd all of our 2, 3, & 4 yr old registered cows this year using the 5 day CoSynch. I read of some really good results coming from this, but this is our first year on the 5 day.

But then we also use MGA on our heifers, and a 7 day CoSynch on all of our recip cows. I'm interested to see how the percentages differ from each protocol. Hard to gauge how much impact variables such as body condition and weather have on these things, but it's certainly part of the equation.

 

[flyingS]

I time bred 800 fall cows 2 years ago and 350 last year. I think we had fair conception rates for the weather. We used a 7 day sync program. We started breeding at 56 hrs after the start time for pulling CIDRs and were always done by 60 hrs. We were set up to run on avg. between 90 and 100 cows an hour with our largest bunch being a little over 350 head. We were breeding those cows in late Oct. in south central SD. Obviously cow condition is important, I think your crew will make as much difference as anything on a time breed. My crew is really quite and very efficient. Those cows need to walk down and alley and stand with out getting all jazzed up.