Get the most
out of the pre-mating season.

While the end of the calving season is often a time where farmers begin to run on empty, it’s still important to keep a focus on the herd’s fertility. In New Zealand, 78% of cows calved in the first 6 weeks of the calving season in 2024¹. The target nationally should be 88%, to get the maximum lactation length and increase milk production². Fertility management is crucial to help hit targets and save money. Preparation before the mating season is key.

Mating start date might seem a while away, but the pre-mating season can give valuable information on the herd’s status before mating begins in earnest. Farms may carry out pre-mating heat detection for the three weeks before mating start date, but this can often only tell half the story. If heats (or the lack thereof!) are observed during the entire pre-mating period, farm managers get a full picture of what’s going on in the herd.

1: LIC, Mid Season Update 2023-2024: https://www.dairynz.co.nz/media/a0klq34e/bop-system-2-2023-24-budget-actuals-mid-season-update.pdf
2: LIC, 8 Key Areas that Impact Reproduction: https://licnz.com/helpful-resources/eight-key-areas-that-impact-reproduction/

‘She looks like she’s on heat, but she’s already painted green so she must have had a heat recently.’ 

‘She looks to be a bit dirty; I better ring the vet to have a look.’ 

‘I need to get back to check 442, she had started calving before milking.’ 

‘That calf looked a bit crook yesterday; I must remember to give her today’s treatment.’

Sound familiar? All the pressing issues of calving, calf rearing and milking cows leaves little time for active heat detection during the pre-mating period. Nedap, and its intuitive software Nedap Now, watches and records when the farmer can’t, providing answers and insights to those continuous daily questions that crop up when you’re working with the herd.

If a farm only identifies these problems in the herd at the start of mating, or in the first three weeks of mating, there is already huge amounts of time lost. Many of the fertility issues begin post calving. These can be identified and treated sooner with the help of Nedap.

Nedap can generate a report to show which cows have not cycled post calving. These are highlighted on the Reproduction Checks Worklist, making it easy to select cows which need further investigation and treatment to help get them back on track. The Worklist also highlights cows that have cycled once post calving, but haven’t had a normal cycle again, making sure no problems are missed. By identifying non-cycling cows or cows cycling abnormally in advance of mating start date, they can be treated promptly. The data from Nedap now helps improve the herd’s submission rate and increase the 6 week in calf rate. All of this contributes to the bottom line, with longer lactations leading to higher production.

To gain insight into how many cows in the herd are cycling correctly before mating, Nedap Now users can view the Cycling Rate Graph. It shows what percentage of the herd is cycling in the weeks before the planned start of mating. Farmers can quickly identify any herd level issues if the rates differ from previous seasons, or if there is a major change at herd level. These could point to other management factors such as diet or disease.

Problem cows can be flagged in Nedap. For example, if a cow had a difficult calving, you could flag that at the time of calving, making it easier to monitor her recovery and return to cyclicity, or prompt you to start a course of treatment if required. Nedap aims to have all the information in one place. This data can be shared easily with farm consultants and vets, so you have one less thing to remember.