Beef Cattle Pregnancy Testing

Have you age pregnancy tested your beef herd?  There are many advantages to this over the standard wet/dry information.  This is where we estimate a calving date for each cow +/- 7 days.

The benefits of dating beef cattle pregnancies mean you can:

• Monitor cows closer at calving.  Especially with heifers and studs recording calves on the drop.
• Calculate a conception rate to each cycle and monitor the efficiency of cow cycling and bull activity.
• Winter later cows differently
• Sell 3rd cycle/late calving cows or can be the first to go if required.
• Identify bull sub-fertility.  Detected if there are different conception rates after bulls have been swapped.  Suspect bulls can be serviced, tested or culled.

If you have more dry cows than normal but have not aged pregnancy tested, you have missed a big opportunity to get to the cause of the problem.  Foetal aging is a key to diagnosing beef repro performance and vital to implementing change that ensures better results.

Fossil Creek Angus stud, founded by Neil & Rose Sanderson, aged pregnancy tested their herd with the Veterinary Centre for the first time last year.

"The data just saved so many issues for us at calving.  We were able to do regular drafts of cows due to calve and made calf recording so much easier....  There were real benefits with grazing management and we'll definitely do it again next year".

Recording of the aged data can be as simple as a spray dot on the back, some put a sheep tag in the ear of 3rd cycle cows, or we can record tag/EID with the pregnancy status data.  In order to get accurate data, foetal aging is best done 6-8 weeks post bull removal.