Breeding & Fertility Management

Breeding & Fertility

The breeding and fertility module in FarmOps offers features that are completely novel. The breeding season on most farms is a short 12-week window. The outcome is critical to optimising production on your farm, while reviewing past performance is always a useful exercise to identify areas for improvement.

Breeding and Fertility in FarmOps will provide you with the information and insights in real time to help you achieve the best possible outcome. Whether you are DIY or use a Technician Service, the Breeding & Fertility Module is essential to keep an eye on how your breeding season is progressing.

Who Benefits from the Breeding and Fertility module in FarmOps?

All suckler and dairy farmers and contract rearers will benefit from the Breeding and Fertility module in FarmOps. Irrespective of production type or herd size, the insights and calculations will be invaluable.

The Munster Bovine Breeding Advisory Team and AI Technician Team can use FarmOps data when on farm to greatly enhance the breeding advice provided to enable the best decisions to be made.

Recording Fertility and Breeding Events

Record Serve - any serve, whether AI or stock bull, can be easily recorded using FarmOps. If the farm is using a technician service, serves recorded on the technician's handheld will automatically be synced through ICBF to FarmOps.

Record Heat Not Served - pre-breeding heat detection is a useful practise to allow early detection of non-cycling cows. Cows recorded in heat will be flagged 18-24 days later in cows due to repeat.

Record Scan - FarmOps allows easy recording of scanning information. Previous serves will be displayed with the days incalf for each serve, This will help you and the person scanning to optimise accuracy. If a cow is empty or if pre-breeding scanning, the fertility health events will allow easy recording of the diagnosis.

How is Breeding & Fertility Data Presented?

Breeding Chart - FarmOps allows you to carry your breeding chart in your pocket. For every breeding female you will see the total serves, details of the last serve and details of any previous serves. There is a separate chart for cows and heifers, with the cow chart including lactation number and calving date. You can search, filter, sort and also click on an individual animal for more details.

Fertility Chart - the fertility chart displays information on lactation, calving date, last serve, total serves and expected calving. If a pregnancy scan has taken place, the information is also displayed here. You can search, filter, sort and also click on an individual animal for more details.

Not Served List - cows calved 35 days not served and heifers over 12 months not served are displayed. This is a critical list of animals that may need veterinary intervention during the breeding season. You can click on an animal to obtain more information.

Served List - this list displays cows or heifers that have at least one serve. You can click on an animal to obtain more information.

Scanned Empty List - this is a list that is always nice to be able to access quickly, particularly later in lactation.

The following key breeding metrics are available during the breeding season:

We will estimate the number of cows & heifers that should be on heat today.

This will help flag to you if you have a problem with cows not cycling or heat observation very early.

We will show you the number of cows & heifers that could repeat today.

These are the animals to keep a close watch on in case of repeat.

We will count all your serves each day and check how many are valid (e.g. we will exclude 1 day repeats). This can be compared then against the target number of serves set daily for your herd.

This will help you see how the breeding season is progressing for you. If you are not hitting the targets, there may be an investigation required.