The Cutting Edge - Article 26 - Evaluating the Economics of Different 1st Breeding Programs

Operators To OWNERS

Short communication: Economic impact among 7 reproductive programs for lactating dairy cows, including a sensitivity analysis of the cost of hormonal treatments

Find the Big 3 Infographic at otovets.com/cuttingedge

Link: https://www.journalofdairyscience.org/article/S0022-0302(20)30275-7/fulltext

Big Take Away #1: Improving fertility and breeding efficiency of our dairies can be accomplished via three methods; improved detection of estrus, synchronization of estrus and synchronization of ovulation and timed AI as proven by many different authors.

Big Take Away #2: To prove their work the authors used the DairyRepro$ tool form UW-Cornell. Available online after a simple search you can do the same analysis with your own numbers they did!

This tool allows you to input all your operations reproductive parameters, drugs costs, labor costs and any other reproductive inputs you could imagine.

Big Take Away #3 Ricci found that using Double-Ovsynch over these other Presynch programs it would obtain a $42 dollar greater profit per cow per year than a baseline Presynch-Ovsynch with 35% conception rate and no cherry picking.

The next closest program used the automated heat detection system in conjunction with Presynch and that came in at more than 50% less profit than Double-Ovsynch with PGF.

Ultimate Message: All that said OTO’er ultimately it comes down to this….can you get a big enough conception rate bump to justify the switch? Many times, the only change to reproduction a dairy will make will be the first breeding program; so use this DairyRepro$ tool to facilitate this discussion. This is the true reason I brought you this article.

Objective: This study had 2 major objectives: (1) to analyze the profitability of an intensive reproductive program involving more injections (i.e., Double Ovsynch) compared with less intensive ones (Presynch-Ovsynch) in different geographic areas (i.e., the United States and Europe) depending on variation of hormonal treatment costs, and (2) to estimate how high the cost of hormonal treatments would have to be to render intensive synchronization programs unprofitable.

Location: University of Torino and University of Wisconsin-Madison

Methods: A reproductive economic analysis simulation model was used to compare the economic impact of pairs of reproductive management programs. We simulated sets of scenarios for 2 analyses. In the first analysis, we calculated the economic impact of switching from a Presynch-Ovsynch program to a Double-Ovsynch program that included a second PGF2α treatment during the Breeding-Ovsynch portion of the program (Double-Ovsynch+PGF). In the second analysis, we conducted a break-even analysis in which the cost of hormonal treatments was incrementally increased within various reproductive management programs.