Reproduction – breed more productive animals

Repro advice from farmers

Hear from farmers with impressive repro results on practical ways to improve your herd's performance.

Body Condition Score at mating and its impact on reproduction

Body condition score (BCS) is a measure of a cow’s fat reserves and is a good indicator of energy balance.

National reproduction results

It can be easy to get caught up in analysing your own results but it is good to know how others are doing to get a true gauge of performance.

Fertility vs Reproduction

There are a couple of terms that often cause confusion in the dairy industry - Fertility and Reproduction. These two terms are often used interchangeably as if they have the same meaning, however that is not the case.

The value of reproduction in dairy farming

In any business, it can be difficult knowing where to invest so that you will get the most bang for your buck.

Eight key areas of farm management

Assess how your farm is performing by measuring how you’re going in eight key management areas.

Why you should consider going all AB

Switch to all artificial breeding (AB) for the whole mating period and get the similar results for less.

Reproductive performance of all AB herds

What can we see from the 2016 to 2018 spring mating data*, between 7% and 11% of all herds nationally doing all AB?

Comparing apples with elephants – the issue with comparing empty rates

When comparing your herd’s reproductive performance across years, or with your neighbour, you need to compare apples with apples.

What's up with my empty rate?

Every year once the pregnancy test results are in we often hear “empty rates are up this year” and “empty rates are way higher than they used to be”. The question is – are these statements true?

Once-a-day milking and reproduction

Herds milked once-a-day (OAD) for the whole season tend to have better reproductive performance than herds milked twice-a-day (TAD) for the whole season.

Get your cows in-calf early to get ahead

Maximise your herd’s reproductive performance, boost productivity and increase profitability by getting your cows in-calf early.

Bull buying and leasing checklist

Before making your bull buying or leasing decisions, make sure the boys that you’re looking at tick off everything on this checklist to help ensure a successful natural mating period.

Reproduction and the Indexes

We often get questions along the lines of “Do high BW cows get in-calf well?”, “Can high producing cows still get in-calf well?”, and “Will making culling decisions based on indexes harm my herds mating results?”

Take a year-round approach to reproduction

Good reproductive performance comes down to how well you manage your animals throughout the season and across their lifetime.

Understanding gestation length

Understanding a calf’s gestation length can be important for herd management practices such as spring feed budgeting.

How to maintain BCS over summer

Get your animals in the right shape for calving by starting your BCS strategy in early summer.

What to do about non-cycling cows

Learn how cows become non-cyclers, how to identify them and what you can do to reduce their numbers in your herd.

Colostrum is the key to healthier calves

Get the right amount of good quality colostrum into your calves and kickstart their long-term health.

Reproduction calendar

Manage reproduction throughout the year – our Reproduction calendar helps you work out what to do, and when.

When to scan calculator

Calculate when pregnancy tests needs to happen so you get early aged results with our 'When to scan’ calculator.

Calving pattern differences between reports

As pregnancy data is starting to come in now, you might be starting to look at your results on the Fertility Focus Report and/or MINDA®LIVE.