The best way to improve profitability and marketing potential is in calf uniformity. Tightening your calving window with bull-bred females can certainly do that, and Jaqcues Fuselier offers practical ways to do that.
He and Shauna Hermel discuss:
We are grateful to this episode's sponsor Lallemand Animal Nutrition.
Find more information to make Angus work for you in the Angus Beef Bulletin and ABB EXTRA. Make sure you're subscribed! Sign up here to the print Angus Beef Bulletin and the digital Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA. Have questions or comments? We'd love to hear from you! Contact our team at abbeditorial@angus.org.
The best way to improve profitability and marketing potential is in calf uniformity. Tightening your calving window with bull-bred females can certainly do that, and Jaqcues Fuselier offers practical ways to do that.
He and Shauna Hermel discuss:
We are grateful to this episode's sponsor Lallemand Animal Nutrition.
Find more information to make Angus work for you in the Angus Beef Bulletin and ABB EXTRA. Make sure you're subscribed! Sign up here to the print Angus Beef Bulletin and the digital Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA. Have questions or comments? We'd love to hear from you! Contact our team at abbeditorial@angus.org.
Hello and welcome to Angus at Work, I'm Kasey Brown. The best way to improve the marketability of your calves is to increase your uniformity. So today, Shauna Hermel sat down with Jacques Fuselier with Merck Animal Health to discuss practical ways to shorten your calving window, and management tips to improve your conception and calving rates. Today's episode is sponsored by Lallemand. So let's dig in.
Shauna Hermel:
I'm visiting this morning with Dr. Jacques Fuselier, with Merck Animal Health. And Dr. Fuselier, could you give us a little bit of background about yourself and what your current research is looking at?
Jacques Fuselier:
I'm originally from a small town of Mamou, Louisiana. I got a bachelor's degree from LSU, and then my DVM from LSU. I had my own practice for several years. It was a mixed animal practice in Southern Louisiana.
Shauna Hermel:
Okay.
Jacques Fuselier:
And then, I went to the University of Illinois for some advanced training and got board certified.
Shauna Hermel:
That was a little different territory.
Jacques Fuselier:
A little bit different, kind of culture shock, but not bad. They're great people. But got board certified in food animal practice there. And then, being a glutton for punishment, I stayed on for another certification. I got board certified as a theriogenologist, so double boarded.
Shauna Hermel:
Oh, excellent.
Jacques Fuselier:
And theriogenology is all things reproduction.
Shauna Hermel:
You bet.
Jacques Fuselier:
So then I was on faculty at LSU, they recruited me to come home. And did that for a few years. And now, I'm with Merck Animal Health, and I've been a technical services veterinarian with Merck Animal Health for six years now.
Shauna Hermel:
Must have missed the orange with the [inaudible 00:02:01], right?Jacques Fuselier:
That's right, absolutely. And so, I spend most of my time helping ranchers and veterinarians in the cow calf space and stalker space. Spend a lot of time looking into antibiotic use and clinical outcomes associated with those antibiotics and anti-inflammatories.Shauna Hermel:
We have a lot of regulations coming down the pike.
Jacques Fuselier:
We do.
Shauna Hermel:
As far as that goes on how we're going to be able to handle antibiotics in the future. We have a new wave of care that'll have some changes in June.Jacques Fuselier:
Yep, in June.
Shauna Hermel:
All right.
Jacques Fuselier:
Nothing over the counter anymore.
Shauna Hermel:
Everything will be by prescription?
Jacques Fuselier:
Correct.
Shauna Hermel:
Okay. Okay. Now we're here today talking a little bit about reproductive performances and bull-bred situations. Could you go ahead and expound upon that for me a little bit?
Jacques Fuselier:
Yeah, so the more we look into it, the more we find value in having a very tight short calving window and so that because a uniform calf crop is more valuable, the calves are heavier and weaning than if they're bred earlier in the calving season. Heifers that are born early in the calving season usually stay in herd at least one year longer than those born later in that calving season. So the thing of estrus cycle in the cow is 21 days on average. So when we break down pregnancy based on time of conception, we want as many as we can get in the first 21 days of bull exposure.
Jacques Fuselier:
And so one way that that's been shown to do this is by just simply adding a prostaglandin like our Estrumate...
... At the start of breeding season. So give a shot to cows of Estrumate of prostaglandin the choice at the start of the breeding season. Most recent, the research that's out there shows that if you turn bulls out and then five days later, four to five days later, you pull the cows in, give them all a shot of Estrumate and then turn them back out with the bulls that tightens that cabin window shortens the breeding season, gets more cows cycling earlier. And so...
Shauna Hermel:
Why wouldn't you do that with, turn the bulls out first before four days before you get the shot?
Jacques Fuselier:
The goal is we're trying to get as many bred in that first 21 days. So the rationale behind that is at any time, if you look at where they are in the estrus cycle, there's going to be some that are ready to ovulate and some that have recently ovulated and some that are in the middle of their cycle not knowing where they are in their cycle. Those that are ovulating or going to ovulate the next 24, 48 hours, they'll be bull bred. Those also would not be responsive to a prostaglandin.
Shauna Hermel:
Okay.
Jacques Fuselier:
Because the earliest you can get a prostaglandin to work consistently is after six days, so seven days on, day seven to day 16 of the estrus cycle.Shauna Hermel:
Estrus cycle.
Jacques Fuselier:
And so those that fall in that time zero, say just before ovulation to day seven after ovulation, they won't be responding. We really want to try to get as many as we can that are about to ovulate bred so we don't have to wait a whole nother cycle, 21 days. The other thing is I said that day six or seven to be reliable on prostaglandin function. If you pull the cows a day, say five, those cows that conceived in the first five days are still going, are going to be safe from pregnancy. The prostaglandins not going to make them come back into heat.
Shauna Hermel:
You bet.
Jacques Fuselier:
If you'd wait today seven or eight, you run the risk of aborting that or losing that conception and they go back into heat and you miss that 21 day cycle. So in short, put the cows out for four or five days before bringing them in for a shot because we want to try to get all those that are ovulating at the very beginning covered with the bull, bring the bull in, not bring the cows in, give a shot at that time, those that bred are safe, the shot's not going to jeopardize that pregnancy and then the cows go back in and it's going to make the others come into heat within a week. And so you really tighten up that breeding window.
Shauna Hermel:
Now doing the heat synchronization programs with an AI program has been growing in popularity and with our readership base we have about twice as many who would do an AI program as what your national average would be. However, when we think about doing that with a set of bulls and not doing AI, I could wear out some bulls pretty fast.
Jacques Fuselier:
You'd think it would, but it's not a switch. It still comes in a wave. But if the bulls are healthy breeding sound, they can and you have the right bull power, one bull per 25 to 30 cows or heifers, there's not enough of them coming into heat fast enough to where they would cause any problems with the bulls. Your normal willpower should be able to cover without any problems.
Shauna Hermel:
Does your research show how many, if you had a hundred cows and hopefully you're turning out four or five bulls with them, if you have a hundred cows, how many of those would come in heat and be bred in that first four or five days versus and the rest of the time where does that?
Jacques Fuselier:
Research has been done up to date... Has not been where we're going to keep bringing them in and ultrasound them to follow the follicular wave and see what what's going on. We haven't followed. So it's retrospective data. So we look at either pregnancy confirmation data, if you can age it or at the time of calving and you can backtrack and see roughly when those were conceived or we can put it into a 21 day block.
Shauna Hermel:
Okay.
Jacques Fuselier:
But we can't put it into the specific day block.
Shauna Hermel:
And you're not heat checking as you do the research?
Jacques Fuselier:
No, we just look at outcomes because we can do all that upfront checking, but if at the end of the day there's no more pregnancies, we don't shift that to the beginning of the breeding season than it was for nothing. The outcome we really care about is actual calves on the ground and tightening up that cabin window. So all the preliminary stuff, if it doesn't result in that, is fairly meaningless. So we just worry about on the end.
Shauna Hermel:
What kind of pregnancy rates are you finding with the bull bred systems?
Jacques Fuselier:
So you don't see any change.
Shauna Hermel:
Okay.
Jacques Fuselier:
Total pregnancies are not changed.
Shauna Hermel:
Okay.
Jacques Fuselier:
You don't have an increase in that. You don't have a change in sex of the calves. The only change is when in that breeding season they got pregnant. So that's the only real change calves are usually averaging 20 pounds heavier at weaning time. Those that go on the feed have improved [inaudible 00:08:56] qualities. The dystocia rate is reduced in the synchronized herds because...
Shauna Hermel:
Why would that be?
Jacques Fuselier:
Because the calves are actually a little bit smaller...
Shauna Hermel:
Okay.
Jacques Fuselier:
... Whenever they're born and cows are in good shape and those others that are take longer, some of those cows are naturally just a little less efficient. The calves, they wait a little bit longer. So calves are a little bit bigger, but sometimes they have a little more fat and so you have a little few more calving issues. But it's one of the things that they found in the studies is that castrate improves and calves are a little bit smaller, but they grow fast and they have more time between birth and weaning. So you get those pounds that you can capture.
Shauna Hermel:
Wonderful. Thank you. And I would assume you have looked at bulls of various breeds, backgrounds and cow herds in various breed backgrounds?
Jacques Fuselier:
Not all of them have been covered, but it doesn't lend itself to be better with one bull or another. The ticket really is it a sexually mature bull?
Shauna Hermel:
Okay.
Jacques Fuselier:
Does it have the right [inaudible 00:09:57] circumference, which would indicate the proper sperm output per day? Is it structurally sound so that it can mount and it can follow the cows and so forth as expected. If they pass all check marks if you want for the check printing silence exam, then that they should, they're not going to have any problems. Whatever you're going to get from them, you would get whether you synchronized or didn't synchronize.
Shauna Hermel:
So are there any other tips that you would advise producers today to improve that number of calves in the first 21 day calving interval?
Jacques Fuselier:
Yes, always parasite control. That's very important. There are some studies, US studies and some studies out of South America that look at parasitized animals versus dewormed animals and conception rates are better anywhere from 10 to 15% more pregnancies and those cows are healthier going in, so they cycling better. Parasites have negative several negative influences, all right. And so everything from hormone production and metabolism to the energy levels required to inflammatory processes that are going on. And by deworming you remove a lot of the inflammatory processes and you improve the amount of energy and improve the hormone performance.
And so they'll be in heat sooner, they'll conceive earlier. Those calves that are born are going to be healthier. You couple that with a synchronization program and really off to a great start from that end of. And all this is said with the assumption that the cows are in good nutritional, a good plan of nutrition, good body condition at the time of breeding, and they're old enough to be sexually mature and they're far enough out of calving that they can cycle. Some of the problems we do find is that it's time to turn the bulls out, but we still have cows that either just calved or yet to calve and those fall out of the program.
So that's one of the benefits of another benefit of trying to tighten it up. You can get better at calling those late [inaudible 00:11:59].
Shauna Hermel:
And that [inaudible 00:12:00] isn't going to start cyclicity.
Jacques Fuselier:
Not very well. They still have to be at a certain, it could make it a little bit sooner, but there's still a threshold. There's still a time of uterine evolution and post calving interval that has to happen before they'll respond in cycle.
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Shauna Hermel:
If a producer is seeing some problems with their conception rates and their subsequent calving rates, what would you suggest as a way to problem solve that? How would you go into a herd and start analyzing points that could be limiting their success?
Jacques Fuselier:
With those, I would hope that they keep records of some sort and I would want to see how this year compared to the previous year or two. Because they might be noticing a change, but that change really has been there for a while and that helps you define, is there truly a reduction in conception rate? The other thing is I would really like to know, it's very important, let me say it this way. It's very important to have a pregnancy diagnosis done 45 to 60 days after breeding season. So with that, you're looking for open cows. What percentage of them are open?
And I say it like that on purpose, I'll get to that in a minute. Which percentage open? From that, it's not a total loss, you can do something through the open cows. You can either market them right away or you can enroll them in a fall breeding program or start them in a different, put them in a different area so it's not total loss. The other thing is that it right then if there's a problem, you'll recognize it and it's so much easier to predict the age of the fetus at that young pregnancy than it is later stage of pregnancy. So you'll get an idea then during that breeding season, which of the 21 day periods where these cows break?
So from that it'll determine do we go to the bulls, let's look at the bulls. Did something go wrong with the bulls? Did we evaluate them appropriately prior to? Were they in good body condition prior to breeding? Did we provide the right vaccines? Did we provide the right deworming? Did we set them up for success, in other words? And if they were, did something go wrong during the breeding? So that's a place to look for sure. If all that checks out, then I want to look at how the cows were managed from the last half of their previous pregnancy, the condition they were in at calving, and then the condition they were in going into breeding.
Was there something different about this year than last year? Whether that be management changes that were done, whether that be environmental stressors that are there, is there something that we can really point to that shows a place where we kind of went off track? And oftentimes you'll find something in that area. It's a lot of people want to blame a disease, but most of the time it's not a disease. It's a simply overlooking something or there was an event that happened that changed how you normally manage this and that shows up. Nutrition's so important. So important. And the quality, the condition of the cattle from that time of calving to rebreeding is so important.
Shauna Hermel:
Mother nature sure makes that a variable every year.
Jacques Fuselier:
They do. And so what I'll try to get a lot of producers I work with to do is, there's a lot of operations that have the cows up late gestation six, seven months. That's usually when they're weaning calves, the pop in the cows giving their shots. That's just how it works. Not the ideal time to do it, that's how it works. So if you take advantage of having them captured, let's do a body condition score at late gestation, at that point it's easier to make nutritional changes that have a better positive impact because they're at a level plan of nutrition. They're not a negative energy balance, they're just on cruise control. So we can, if you worried about the condition of the herd or even a few of them, we can alter how we feed them if we need to, maybe deworm them we can look into, okay, what might be going on?
Let me improve the body condition so that they go into the calving time in better condition at a higher plan of nutrition and it's easier to get them back into breeding shape, if you will, and be more fertile. So that's very hard. And a lot of people try to do this and growing up we were no different, we tried to add calving. We recognize, oh wow, because now that big belly's gone because the calves out, right? So then it really shows up, man, these cows are in worse condition than I thought they were. So we really try to play catch up and you start dumping feed trying to really get, and that actually has a reverse effect. It even prolongs them coming back in heat because now they got the subacute acidosis going on and it's a total shock to their system. You're trying too hard, too fast, it's not as good as if you would've started that two, three months ago and gradually bring them up, if that makes sense. That to me a very critical time point is that late gestation of that cow herd for many different issues.
Shauna Hermel:
That's when the cow is at her lowest nutrient requirement of the whole year.
Jacques Fuselier:
That's right. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Shauna Hermel:
Now you've taken the pregnancy test at 45, 60 days, so you know who's open. You said that that gives you the opportunity to manage those open cows.
Jacques Fuselier:
And then in the fall you'd be palpating them at that late gestation period. And so what you're doing at that point is we are looking for who's pregnant because we can group those together and we know, okay, they're pregnant and we have a change from spring or early summer to fall of X amount. If what's normal for this operation, is it reduction of 2% those diagnosed pregnant and that actually calve, is it 5%? What's the normal attrition rate of this...
Shauna Hermel:
From the first break check to the second grade term.
Jacques Fuselier:
That's correct.
Shauna Hermel:
Okay.
Jacques Fuselier:
And if we are in that rate, well, everything's good. If all of a sudden it's much worse, now I have just a couple of months timeframe to investigate what went wrong versus I just check them at six or seven months pregnant and we normally at 95% pregnancy now we at 82. What in the world's going on? Well, I don't know because the last time we checked them was the last time they were pregnant. So there's so many things that could have happened in that year that we can't... We don't know where to start going backwards.
Shauna Hermel:
What are the most likely causes of some of those late term abortions?
Jacques Fuselier:
Late term abortions that's often going to be, unless there's some bad environmental change, a sudden freeze or suddenly gets unseasonably hot and humid for a period of time. Those strong swings can cause a few cows to lose their pregnancies. But from, if you have what I would call a storm where you have several cows aborting in that six, seven month timeframe, lepto is a common infectious cause. There's another condition called neospora, so neospora is another common cause that would need to be evaluated. Back in old days you'd say brucellosis, if you're in an area that brucellosis is still a concern, that's something to worry about, especially the fact that it could be dangerous to humans. So always approach abortions or aborted fetuses with caution have gloves, try not to splash your face, that type of thing. There are some viruses that'll do it IBR being one, can cause some of these abortions we worry about.
But when you have that, it's so important to get fetus and placenta submitted to a diagnostic lab on ice as soon as possible to really increase your chances of getting a diagnosis on what happened. I've had herds that had a recent increase in anaplasmosis and they'll lose, I've had herds in the past where they're basically suffering a nitrate toxicity. It wasn't to the point where the cows were falling out, but it wasn't to the point where there wasn't a lot of oxygen in their blood system and so it couldn't support the pregnancy. So they lost. Now these are rare instances, but they happen nonetheless.
Shauna Hermel:
Yes, and everybody, when you lose, lose a calf or cow slips a calf, you want to find out what...
Jacques Fuselier:
You do.
Shauna Hermel:
... What caused it, because there's a lot of money tied up.
Jacques Fuselier:
Absolutely.
Shauna Hermel:
In feed and care in and maintenance.
Jacques Fuselier:
And that's one of the reasons I like doing a few different points throughout the pregnancy, having doing checkpoints [inaudible 00:20:54], because really increases your chances of figuring out what might have happened so that I know what to do going forward. I know what to look for next time. And if it's just you hadn't seen them since last year and all of a sudden you look and there's big reduction in pregnancies and cows walking around after birth hanging out, it's hard to go back and figure out what happened.
Shauna Hermel:
A lot of people might resist doing one pregnancy test and the work is involved in that. How do you convince somebody to maybe do two or three checks through a nine-month gestation period or a 10 month?
Jacques Fuselier:
It's very hard. It usually takes a problem to get that added into the thing. One thing I learned in practice, it took me a few years, is that me trying to convince somebody is the wrong approach. I'm not there to convince people. I'm there to help them reach their goals. And if they tell me their goal is to improve their calf, their calving rate or their conception rate, which are two different things based on what they're trying to improve, these are some of the tactics that we can employ to get to that goal. That's how I approach it. If they like where they are in the cabin, they don't want to try to improve for whatever reason, that's none of my business. I'm there to help them reach whatever their goals are.
Shauna Hermel:
Now you mentioned there's a difference between conception rate and calving rate.
Jacques Fuselier:
Yes, ma'am.
Shauna Hermel:
Can you go ahead and explain that?
Jacques Fuselier:
Sure. And that's goes back to the two palpations we were talking about. If you really dig through the literature, you'll find that time zero, which is initial conception to about day 60, just for easy numbers, it's really like 54. That timeframe is where more than 50% of lost pregnancies happen. So they'll get pregnant and then the first two months of pregnancy, they lose it for whatever reason. The next timeframe would be the first say 100 to 120 days of pregnancy.
So between zero and 100 to 120 days, that's where any loss pregnancy, that's where the majority's going to happen. And so when you do those early pregnancy checks, you're looking for opens. I say that because those are the ones that didn't get pregnant at all, and you know they're open and depending on how many they are, we need to do something about it. The others therefore are not open so we are assuming they're going to maintain a pregnancy. You want that rate, in the ideal world, you wouldn't have no more than 5% open cows. So that would in turn mean roughly 95% pregnancy.
But until a few months of pregnancy, you're not safe because the majority of the losses happen in the beginning. So that's when you come back later when they should be into the second trimester beginning the third trimester, and you're confirming that they're still pregnant. So that's really where they're truly, this is a safe pregnancy right here. It's not uncommon to have a one to 3% difference between conception or early pregnancy testing and late, so you shoot for it. Some of the national targets would be a 95% conception rate and a 92% weaning rate. So from conception, those that actually go to calf and have that calf survive to weaning, you can expect two to 5% reduction naturally, it just happens. But if you're starting out with only a 90% conception rate, now you're almost at an 80% weaning rate, and that gets very expensive on the cows that don't wean a calf.
Shauna Hermel:
What would be your tips for guaranteeing safe pregnancies?
Jacques Fuselier:
I'm not going to say guaranteeing, but in order to improve, give it the best chance you can give it. I would say making sure that the cows are properly vaccinated. We want to think about diseases that would cause a reduction in pregnancy, either fertility problems or pregnancy wastage, the loss of a pregnancy. And so I would vaccinate, I always had my producers vaccinating their cows ahead of breeding so that they're at max protection that you can get from vaccine throughout the most dangerous time and that's during pregnancy. That also improves herd health, the herd immunity overall. Right?
Shauna Hermel:
So do you differentiate between killed vaccines and modified live, or is that?
Jacques Fuselier:
So that I'll defer to their veterinarian.
Shauna Hermel:
Okay.
Jacques Fuselier:
I'll tell you, so much of it depends on how much time they have from calving until breeding. A lot of research would indicate that if you can get in the development of the heifer, if you can use that time with modified lives to improve the foundation of the immune system and the memory cell, do it, then that gives you the option that if you can continue on a modified live program, great. If you can't, you can enroll them into a killed vaccine program and use it as an annual booster, but that foundation was set early in life. So there's the, it's safe and safe and effective to give that.
Shauna Hermel:
Okay.
Jacques Fuselier:
Now again, I'll defer to their individual veterinarian for their individual situation, but in general terms, that's a sound practice to do. Set up your heifers with a modified life, maintain your pregnancy would've killed unless you can safely do modified life throughout.
Shauna Hermel:
Okay.
Jacques Fuselier:
So I would make sure they're vaccinated appropriately. I would make sure they're dewormed properly going into that breeding season, check them mid pregnancy, make sure that the nutritional status of the herd is appropriate, and that can be as simple as doing body condition scorings. And for those busy, most people are busy, so I always say, take some pictures at bull turnout and take some pictures at mid gestation and compare. Then take pictures again at calving. Those three points give you a timeline. If just looking at body condition, what kind of changes are there? The other thing I would say is don't neglect the bulls and vaccinate them the same way. I would love to see them vaccinated two months before turnout. See if you can vaccinate and then do a breathing silence exam. Then it gives you the chance to recognize any problems that might be there, whether it be a lameness issue or some infection in the reproductive track or something along those lines.
You have time to get them over it and get them ready. If you have to increase their body condition, you have a couple months to get them there. If the bull is just not good, he does not pass his breathing silence exam for whatever reason with him, structural or reproductive, you have two months to find a bull that would fit your program instead of having to scramble at the last minute to just get a bull. You have more time to be picky and get an appropriate bull. And then they're vaccinated the same as the cows, so they're all in the same protection and the same program.
Shauna Hermel:
We covered a lot of ground.
Jacques Fuselier:
We did.
Shauna Hermel:
All right. Well, I appreciate your time.
Jacques Fuselier:
Happy to do it.
Kasey Brown:
Listeners, to get more information to help make Angus work for you, check out the Angus B Bulletin and the Digital Angus Beef Bulletin extra publication. You'll find links to subscribe to both of those in our show now. If you have questions or comments, please let us know at abbeditorial@angus.org. And we sure appreciate it if you would rate this podcast or leave a review to tell us what you learned, what was helpful, and share this episode with any other profit minded cattleman. And we're grateful to today's episode sponsor Lallemand Animal Nutrition. Thanks for listening. This has been Angus at Work.