And an exciting milestone is achieving the lowest equal not-in-calf rate of 15.6% in the shortest average mating length recorded so far, 10.7 weeks.

“It’s great news to see positive results. We as a sector are working hard to support farmers to continue to improve their reproductive performance. It’s not something you can do as a one-off, improving reproduction requires continuous work,” DairyNZ’s InCalf programme manager, Samantha Tennent, explains.

The results come through LIC and are included in the national Dairy Statistics report. Each season the data is analysed from herds that produce a detailed DairyNZ InCalf Fertility Focus Report.

“We are continuing to get more farmers producing the detailed information through early-aged pregnancy testing each year, with 4430 seasonal calving herds producing detailed reports now, representing 2,377,370 cows. It’s exciting progress.”

The figure represents 55% of the 8092 herds LIC has producing a Fertility Focus Report in New Zealand. In 2018 it was 52% and 48% in 2017, the trend highlights farmers are interested in having detailed reproductive reports.

“Having that detailed data is crucial to help farmers make decisions about drying off cows at the right time, based on age, body condition score and accurate predicted calving dates.

It helps farmers allocate their winter mobs for wintering better, and allows accurate feed allocation, especially on crop. It also helps with easier management and observation of springing cows through the calving transition,” Samantha says.

Interestingly, there were 464 herds analysed that completed all artificial breeding (AB) for their 2019 mating period, compared to 3966 that performed a split of AB and natural mating. There was a 1.6% difference in ‘6-week in-calf rates’ with the all AB herds achieving 69.3% and they also had higher submission rates. Their conception rates were lower though, but they have a dilution effect with the number of inseminations they do.

The all-AB herds also had slightly higher ‘not-in-calf rates’ on average, 0.9%, even though their mating length was very similar.

“Farmers should work with their vet and trusted advisers to analyse their individual results. There are no silver bullets to improve reproductive performance and it pays to identify the areas of opportunity and focus on a few each year to make gains.”

Further information can be found at dairynz.co.nz/reproduction

2019 Reproduction results

National Averages