Optimizing Dairy Cow Reproductive Performances besides the Use of Hormones

Despite the considerable expansion of our knowledge about the bovine reproductive cycle and the increasing possibilities to intervene herein, fertility in high yielding dairy herds has unremittingly been reported to decline since last decades. Since studies reporting about this fertility decrease originate from regions all over the globe, this situation seems to be widespread and universally accepted. In the United States, for example, the conception rate has been reported to decrease by 0.45% per year over a twenty year period (Beam & Butler, 1999). In the UK this decrease has been in the order of 1% per year (Royal et al. 2000). As comparable results from several other countries continue to appear, these reports have provoked an alarm response that goes on unabated (Bousquet et al. 2004).