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A good inseminator has received appropriate training and continues to improve his/her skill by daily practice.
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Good reproductive management is one of the key aspects for a good dairy farm. Practically this means that heifers and cows must be inseminated with a high rate of success. But which factors influence this success? To name a few important factors:
Sound heat detection: This is responsibility of the farmer! The farmer should observe the cows carefully several times per day and take clear notes of heat symptoms. If heat is detected, the technicians should be called immediately.
Good timing: Insemination should take place at the right time. The golden rule is: A cow in heat in the morning, should be served in the evening, a cow in heat in the evening should be served next morning. If a cow was served in the evening and she is still in heat next morning, she should be served again.
Quality of the semen: The inseminator is responsible to purchase and sell high quality semen. He needs to ensure that the quality is maintained during storage and that semen is used before expiry date.
Skills of the inseminator: A good inseminator has received appropriate training and continues to improve his/her skill by daily practice. A technicians who only does a few insemination weekly, can never become a good one.
Note: Even an insemination at the right time with good quality semen by a highly skillful inseminator cannot always be successful. The aim should be a success rate of more than 70%.
Previously, several dairy development programs recognized that the availability of inseminators and semen is a crucial point for dairy development. Therefore, many of these programs provided semen or even the whole insemination for free. But does this policy really helps the dairy farmers? In my opinion, it doesn’t. In fact, it probably does the opposite!
Let me explain. What will be the effect of free semen on the four factors listed above? Will farmers and technicians still be encouraged to do careful heat detection and inseminate at the right time? Maybe they think: it’s for free, if it doesn’t work this time, we will try again. We all heard the stories about cows that were inseminated more than 10 times!
And what about the quality? Can farmers still request good quality, or will the answer of the technician be: It’s for free, you should not complain! And finally, will the technicians still be motivated to do their best? They probably only get a fixed salary or maybe a fee for each insemination. So my conclusion is quite frank: Free semen supply does not improve reproductive management, even it hampers to focus on what is really important.
The only obvious benefit of free semen supply is that it comes at no cost for the farmer. But even that is not really true. Every cycle that a cow is not successfully served, means a 3 week longer calving interval or 3 weeks of feeding a cow without income from milk. So, no free semen does not come for free.
The key point of good reproductive management is that both the farmer and the technician recognize the importance of getting the cows pregnant in time and understand that both of them play an important role in getting success. The goal is to have one calf per cow per year, which means that a cows needs to be successfully inseminated within 3 months after giving birth. A first heat should ideally be seen within 40 days after giving birth, but certainly within 60 days.
Once farmers truly realizes this, they will happily pay 100.000 vnd or more for a good technicians who uses good quality semen. And they will make sure that every insemination they pay for, takes place at the right time. Several farmers in North and South Vietnam already expressed this same opinion on important national conferences. The cost for an insemination is not the most important thing. Getting the cows pregnant in time, is. And as always, everyone is willing to pay more for better quality semen and service!
This article was publish on the Milk Matters 2 >>
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Introduction
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