Fall Conference 2015 – College of Veterinary Medicine at Urbana-Champaign Strategies to Improve Reproductive Performance in Cattle

Introduction The decline in fertility reported from 1960 to early 2000’s (Lucy, 2001) was the motive for prolific research in dairy cows, which in instance lead to identification of multiple culprit factors for this impaired reproductive performance in dairy cattle. (Norman et al., 2009; Santos et al., 2004). Reduced fertilization, embryonic survival, and high prevalence of anovulation in dairy cows compromising detection of estrus, pregnancy per AI and maintenance of pregnancy were defined as the major factors responsible for impaired reproductive performance in dairy cattle (Santos et al., 2004; Santos et al., 2010a). Extensive use of timed AI started with the development of OvSynch program (Pursley et al., 1995), the implementation of daughter pregnancy rate (DPR), the phenotypic measure used by the USDA for daughter fertility (Norman et al., 2009), and use of production life in selection program halted the decline in reproductive performance of dairy cows reported for the previous 40 years. However, DPR is influenced by voluntary waiting period and breeding policy at the farm level, thus it is unclear how much of this improvement is a true function of better fertility, or just implementation of better reproductive management. Herein, reproductive management strategies that empower veterinarians with tools to help dairy producers improve fertility will be discussed with emphasis on its implementation. Although data presented on this manuscript is from dairy cattle, there are many physiological responses and strategies that can be applied to beef cows. I will present some examples to illustrate scenarios for beef cattle during my seminar at the fall conference.