Fertility Benchmarking Online

Source: CAFRE
Date: 4th September 2006

Poor fertility performance has been identified as a widespread problem in Northern Ireland dairy herds. Dairy farmers reported increased difficulty in detecting cows on heat and poor conception rates leading to extended calving intervals and prolonged calving seasons.  Poor fertility has a major impact on herd financial performance and on labour inputs. The costs can now be quantified for your farm using Fertility Benchmarking Online, a new program launched by CAFRE on the Rural Portal website this week.

Recent AgriSearch funded research conducted by AFBI Hillsborough (formerly ARINI) quantified the level of herd fertility in Northern Ireland on 19 dairy herds throughout the Province.  These herds ranged from low input spring calving grass based systems to high input-high output systems with cows producing in excess of 10,000 litres/cow/year.  This research highlighted the variability in dairy herd fertility as shown in Table 1 below. While the average performance was relatively poor, the study showed that good fertility performance was still possible in well managed, high yielding herds.

Table 1. Range in Herd Fertility Performance in N. Ireland

Part of the AgriSearch study on the active use of heat and service records indicated that herd fertility performance can be improved through better use of records.  Anticipating oestrus based on previous heats and services effectively improved the average heat detection rate in 6 herds from 73% to 83%. In addition, the average interval to first service was reduced by 4 days and the 100-day In-Calf Rate (proportion of cows intended for rebreeding back in-calf within 100 days) was increased from 65 to 69%.  Through the development of Fertility Benchmarking Online, CAFRE Dairying Technologists have successfully worked with local herd management software companies to adopt this technology within their packages. Farmers are now actively using this technology through their herd management software packages to improve overall herd fertility performance.

Research findings from the AgriSearch fertility study and work carried out by Teagasc in the Republic of Ireland and other research institutes in the USA and the Netherlands have been incorporated into the Dairy Herd Fertility Challenge.  Over 400 farmers across Northern Ireland have already participated in the Dairy Herd Fertility Challenge programme, which covers a range of topics including heat detection, insemination, nutrition, health and breeding - all of which can affect herd fertility performance. The Fertility Challenge is delivered by locally based CAFRE Dairying Development Advisers in conjunction with veterinary surgeons and breeding specialists. A key aspect of the Challenge involves farmers using their breeding records to assess their herd fertility performance.

Fertility Benchmarking Online has been developed as a tool to compliment the Dairy Herd Fertility Challenge. Benchmarking herd fertility performance is the first step in understanding how to increase herd profitability through improving fertility. For the first time, all dairy farmers in Northern Ireland have the opportunity to assess their herd fertility performance, and at the same time benchmark their herd fertility performance in a consistent and timely manner with herds of similar management systems.  

The various fertility indices used by Fertility Benchmarking Online such as submission rate, conception rate and 100-day in-calf rate will already be familiar to farmers who have participated on the Dairy Herd Fertility Challenge.  It is envisaged that these indices will become the standards for assessing fertility performance and will increase confidence in the use of fertility data by both farmers and professional advisers, vets and consultants working in the field of dairy herd fertility.  Overall fertility performance will be assessed in terms of 100-day in-calf rate and projected herd calving intervals. The financial impact of herd fertility will be calculated using projected calving intervals and the number of animals potentially culled not-in-calf at the end of the breeding season.  

Development work on Fertility Benchmarking Online commenced in early 2004 with funding provided through the VISION programme.  This application is available on the Rural Portal at www.ruralni.gov.uk/fertilitybenchmarking and was developed by Greenmount Campus, CAFRE and the Biometrics team at AFBI (formerly DARD Science Service).  Farmers will be able to benchmark their herd fertility performance by electronically uploading their herd fertility information from herd management software packages including Agridata, Farmwizard and Kingswood which each provide data upload facilities. Alternatively, calving dates, service dates and pregnancy diagnosis data can be manually entered onto the application online. For further information on Fertility Benchmarking Online contact Kim Mooney on 028 9442 6756 or email  fertilitybenchmarking.greenmount@dardni.gov.uk.