Every farmer dreads the anxious wait between the end of the breeding season and scanning time. It’s a nervous time and understandably so.

The consequences of a bad scanning can have a significant impact on the performance of a farm, denting stock numbers and subsequently hitting output.

The most difficult part of the matter is that in many cases, this impact is not felt immediately and it is one that can only be felt in a year to two years’ time.

This week, we take a look at how scanning went for the Teagasc/Irish Farmers Journal BETTER farm beef challenge participants with cows calving next spring. Some farms are all spring-calving, while more are split-calving. Given that two farmers have not yet scanned, Figure 1 illustrates how scanning went for 20 programme farmers.

It would be fair to say that at first glance, Figure 1 shows that this year’s scanning threw up slightly more of a mixed bag than normal.

On a positive note, thankfully 10 of the 20 farmers in question have results of over 90% pregnant. On the other hand, a number of farmers towards the lower end of the scale are slightly disappointed with how scanning went, but an investigation into each circumstance shows that there is a reason for most of the issues, the drought being a key one.

Last year’s scanning round-up showed that the average pregnancy rate after breeding was 90%. This year, despite some difficulties, the average pregnancy rate is still only 2% lower at 88%.

Another factor worth considering is the length of the breeding season. Calving interval is one of the cornerstones to suckler cow efficiency, and as the BETTER farm participants look to increase breeding efficiencies on their farms, the length of the breeding season is one area for attention.

It is recommended that in order to maintain a compact calving and a 365-day calving interval, breeding should last no longer than 12 weeks.

For the programme farmers, the average length of this year’s breeding season lasted 10.5 weeks, demonstrating a clear move in the right direction. Furthermore, eight of the farmers opted for breeding periods of less than 10 weeks, while only two farmers opted to go over a 12-week breeding period.

High fliers

For Harry and Joe Lalor, it was an extremely successful breeding season. One hundred and thirty cows were run with four stock bulls. With 118 in-calf, this results in a pregnancy rate of 91%.

Harry explained: “We are very happy with this year’s breeding because we started breeding two weeks earlier and breeding only lasted 10 weeks, which is two weeks less than last year. This is a four-week change for some cows and we still got very pleasing results and now have a tight calving period to look forward to”.

Garreth McCormack in Cavan and James Flaherty in Kerry are also extremely pleased with their results, given it was both farmers’ first time operating 100% AI. Garreth had an exceptional 98% of cows in-calf while James had an impressive 88% in-calf in an extremely short seven-week window.

Drought victims

It would be fair to say that John McSweeney in Cork was disappointed with his scanning after 11 cows showed up empty out of 31. However, as a result of the drought, John was faced with a severe uphill battle to conserve enough fodder for the winter.

While nobody likes a bad breeding season, John explained: “In some ways I am blessed I don’t have those extra 10 mouths to feed. I simply wouldn’t have enough silage.

“Twenty-five cows is my target so I’m still not a million miles off that. Of the cows that are left, there is only one old cow so I have a good young herd to re-build once again.”

Discussing the reason for the cows being empty, John picked out the drought as one of the main culprits:

“Most of the cows went in-calf at the start of breeding and again at the end of the season. There is a big gap in the middle and this coincides with around the time the drought hit badly. I don’t know whether it was a stock bull issue or whether the heat affected the cows but something definitely was triggered by the conditions.”

This view is one echoed by Westmeath farmer Martin Downes. While Martin had a good scanning with an 85% pregnancy rate, he expressed his disappointment over the cows he is losing.

“We had four heifers empty and 13 cows. Of those 13, six or seven of those are only young first- or second-calvers.”

He too highlighted the drought as the main culprit. “Definitely I’d say those younger cows were under too much pressure from a lack of grass and the extreme heat and they didn’t cycle. If I could do it again I would have picked them out for extra feeding.

“However, one thing I do know is that there was a big gap in the middle with no cows served. The heat either stopped cows cycling or my stock bulls went off-colour during the extreme heat.”