Routine Herd Fertility Monitoring - A Necessity or Money Down the Drain?

摘要

Dairy producers have many tasks on their farms, but they may not have time to accomplish all of those tasks. For example, it has been estimated that more than 95% of dairy producers employ a tax adviser or accountant to handle their farm business taxpreparations (Hilty, 2009). They do this for many reasons, including the time required to prepare tax forms, the technical knowledge of tax rules and the legal liabilities of filing incorrect tax forms. One group of tasks that many dairy producers perform is related to routine herd fertility treatments. Trends in statistical measures of dairy cattle reproductive performance indicate that fertility is declining (Pursley, 2007). Declining reproductive performance also leads to lower profits, which means producers have to consider each cost on the dairy farm carefully.