Conception rates in this heat?

[CAB]

What are PPL's opinions of what kind of conception rates we'll all get through this time period of extreme heat? It sure makes me think of looking into a little ear like Santa Gertrudis or Beefmaster.

We pulled cidrs Thurday evening & finished up breeding Sunday morning. We only had 12 head left & I was pleasantly surprised that they all did show strong heats. It'll be interesting to see how it works out. All bets are off as to it being very good.

 

[Pleasant Grove Farms]

we in South Dakota breed in this heat all the time; I think alot depends on if your cows have a place to cool off during the heat of the day; we have dams with deep water and the cows will go in those to cover even their backs and just stay in there to cool off; they do what they need to to be comfortable.
conception rates are a whole lot better in the heat than they are in the cold of Novermber when the temps can get down to -20...then the cows don't even show heat.

 

[Doc]

I hope pretty good. We are doing are last flush for the spring , week after next. Flushing our Lucky Charm cow to Asset. She had 15 eggs on her last flush. We will be sticking some from this flush in fresh.

 

[cattlefarmer]

I think it hurts the conception rates especially with cidrs.  My past experience with cidrs at this time of the year with heat like this is not good, less than 50%.  Hope you have better luck than I did.  There is a reason they fall calve alot in the southern states.

 

[frostback]

This is the earliest we have turned bulls out, they can heat detect better than us in the heat. 

 

[Limiman12]

We had horrible conception last year in similar heat. 

 

[leanbeef]

Good luck with that... We have some fall calves & some spring, and we try to have our spring calves on the ground before end of February. We're about to pull the bulls from spring breeding now. Our spring calving used to be mid-February until early April...since we've gotten that bunch moved up to almost all January calvers, the calves do better, the cows do better & conception rates have improved. I would have everything calve the first week of January if I could!

 

[justintime]

We don't get even close to the amount of heat that most of you get but we will get, on occasion, several days of 100 or more. Maybe our cows are not acclimatized for this kind of heat, but I have seen gaps in our calving the next year that correlate to the hottest days the year before during breeding season. I have always wondered if it was more an issue with the bulls in the heat, and not the cows. As for flushing, and implanting embryos in extreme heat, my limited experience is not good. I flushed 4 donors during a very hot period a few years ago, and ended up with no freezable embryos, and a few very poor quality embryos that were questionable at best. The next time these four donors were flushed, the weather was much cooler and we ended up with over 50 grade 1 embyos. I hope that was only my experience and no one elses, and that everyone has good luch getting their cows bred and also hope you can cope with the heat yourselves.

 

[frostback]

We just brought a cow home that we want to flush but she will wait till the calf is weaned and it cools off. I think heat is harder on flush cows then cold.

 

[justintime]

We just brought a cow home that we want to flush but she will wait till the calf is weaned and it cools off. I think heat is harder on flush cows then cold.

I would also agree with this. We have had some excellent flushes in nasty cold weather. We have had much poorer results in extreme heat. In the winter of 2010, we had 8 donors at the ET center through the winter. It was a very cold winter with lots of temperatures below -30. Five of these donors were flushed together in a period when the thermometer hardly ever rose to -30, and we averaged 21 embryos from these donors. In my experience, cold temperatures have far less affect on them than the heat does.  I suppose this would also depend on the nutrition they were receiving during the cold weather.

 

[vet tech]

Cattle comfort = reproductive results

 

[frostback]

Preg checked today. Got 93%.
Some interesting facts about this year.
54% bulls
19% heifers
27% unsexed

Might have some steers to sell next year...

 

[RidinHeifer]

How do they sex them?  Just curious.  I'm going to get my cow checked again to make sure.

 

[frostback]

With a ultrasound machine between 60 and 100 days. We had a couple too early too do, and a couple too late to do, then some calves not laying right to get a good view, and a couple cows would not cooperate so he would rather be accurate then wrong, so he wont guess.
I was told to add that we had 83% on AI and Embryos.

 

[jalebe]

We preg checked saturday & had 10 out of 14 that we AI'd caught. Of the ones they could sex 7 heifers 4 bulls.