We scanned the cows at home this week. The end result was good enough with 9% empty from a 12-week breeding season.

Forty-nine per cent of the cows went in-calf during the first three weeks of the breeding season, 24% in the next three weeks and 18% in the last six weeks.

We used a lot of sexed semen during the first three weeks, but even though we used it on clean, fertile cows, the non-return rate was about 30%, so this held back the average a lot for the first cycle.

We will definitely have to think twice about using this technology again with cows unless something changes, but we may use it again in the future with heifers. The heifers scanned very well this year after disappointing last year. We had only 3% not in calf after 10 weeks and 75% in calf during the first three weeks.

These heifers were run in two separate batches with stockbulls instead of AI and this has thankfully worked very well this year.

These figures make expansion possible next year without having to buy in too much extra stock. We also left the bulls in a bit longer than the 12 weeks that showed up on this scan, so we might scan the empty cows again later in the year if they haven’t come bulling and see if we can get a few more of the cows in-calf yet.

We may or may not hold onto these late calvers – we’ll see what we need for next year and see how late they are before we make that call.

Scanning early gives more time to deal with any problems that may arise and we felt that this was important when planning for next year in particular.

Scanning early also allowed sexing of a lot of the pregnancies. Out of the cow pregnancies that were sexed, 60% were heifers and 40% bulls with the in-calf heifers closer to 50/50.

Low pregnancy

The sexed semen did work well to skew the heifer percentage in our favour, but we still find that the pregnancy rate is just too low for what we want from our herd in the future. It was okay to try it this year with superlevy still a factor.

The pre-mating scan seems to have helped a lot to tidy up cows at the start of breeding season. The problem cows seemed to get sorted out and go in-calf quicker. The first six weeks of calving should see us calving 80% of the herd, including the heifers.

Meanwhile, the cows are continuing to milk very well and milk solids are way ahead of last year.

The texts from some Co-ops including Glanbia are now showing the total kgs of milk solids from the last collection. This is a great way to monitor cow production as the yield winds down for the rest of the year.

The cows here are doing three litres a day less this month than last, which seems like a big drop, but with the percentages rising, they are doing virtually the same quantity of solids.

Hopefully they can maintain this performance for another few weeks. At the moment, they are milking 17.12 litres at 4.29% fat and 3.87% protein or 1.44kg of solids with over 40% heifers in the herd.

We are also hoping to get some ground reseeded this week. We are using a mixture of Tyrella, Aberchoice and Abergain, with clover. Hopefully we can get it in before the weekend and get a chance to relax and enjoy the hurling.