Good breeding management is a core building block of financial health on dairy farms, especially at a time of rising input costs and falling milk prices. According to Teagasc, the total cost of a first-round missed heat and the resulting slip in calving date for a 12-week breeding season is €150.

The costs of poor herd fertility are seen in reduced days in milk, poorer grass utilisation, higher replacement rates, and increased feed and labour costs. The dramatic increases in fertiliser, feed, land and labour costs place further stress on farmers to maximise technical efficiencies in critical areas, such as breeding.

Fixed-timed artificial insemination (TAI), when operated as part of a sound reproductive management programme, is a valuable technology for addressing costly slippage problems. TAI allows dairy farmers to concentrate the timing of heat among a group of animals while reducing time-consuming heat detection. This practice gives dairy farmers the opportunity to breed 100% of their heifers on the first day of the breeding season, thereby maximising their chances of longevity in the herd and increasing their lifetime performance.

In addition to its use on replacement heifers, TAI can be beneficial for non-cycling cows in the milking herd, helping to consolidate breeding by bringing forward heats and getting animals cycling sooner. TAI ensures more animals are going in-calf earlier in the breeding season, condensing the subsequent calving pattern earlier in the season and reducing the herd empty rate. This has positive knock-on effects by reducing the herd’s replacement requirements, and the associated costs.

Our research team in UCD investigated the potential profit from TAI use in Irish pasture-based dairy herds. After the full costs of land, labour and capital were accounted for, our analysis found that TAI use (at a treatment cost of €41/head) in heifers only could return a profit advantage of €16/heifer bred compared to standard oestrus detection and AI.

The profit advantage increased to €34/cow when TAI was used on heifers and cows for the first breeding only, equating to a profit increase of around €3,400 for a typical 100-cow herd. Interestingly, this analysis found that the genetic gain of the herd increased as more of the herd went in-calf to high-EBI dairy sires earlier in the breeding season.

In conclusion, TAI use will help farmers get animals bred more efficiently, reducing costly days open for the herd and benefiting the bottom line overall.

Donal Walsh is the lead author in a new research paper titled ‘Economics of timed artificial insemination with unsorted or sexed semen in a high-producing, pasture-based dairy production system’.

For me, there are very clear benefits to farmers in using fixed-time AI for heifers and also cows with health problems. This research suggests that there are benefits from using it among cycling milking cows also.

I can definitely see it having a role in terms of sexed semen on dairy cows. For example, a farmer can select the top 20% of their cows that are in good body condition score, have no health problems and are calved 60 days, and breed these using fixed-time AI on day-one of the breeding season with sexed semen.

Even if they repeat, they have a strong chance of going in-calf inside the first 24 days of breeding.

A word of caution though – it is not cheap and in order to get the best results, one would need to ensure that they are following the correct protocol to the letter.

In a recent study carried out by Teagasc on 816 dairy heifers on their research farms, the conception rate to fixed-time AI with sexed semen was 59%, which is the same rate as in the study referenced above. Anecdotal evidence from talking to farmers is that there is a big range in results on farm, with some farms getting sub-50% in-calf and others getting closer to 70% in-calf using timed AI and sexed semen.