30-Second Heifer AssessmentIn less than a minute, you can increase yearling heifer performance by as much as 20% with a reproductive tract score

摘要

It's a time-honored tradition — visually assessing potential replacement heifers to identify the oldest and largest candidates. But time has also proven that age and size can't guarantee fertility.Some producers may have recognized that continual selection of the heaviest heifers at weaning inadvertently increased cow size over time. On the other hand, consistently choosing lightweight heifers reaching puberty at an early age could decrease average age of puberty and increase the risk of mating with a co-pastured bull.Until science perfects a definitive DNA fertility test, beef producers can pursue optimum reproduction results by obtaining a reproductive tract score (RTS) on potential replacement heifers 4-6 weeks before breeding season. RTS values can help predict reproductive perfor-mance of yearling heifers, especially for pregnancy rates in synchronized breeding and pregnancy rates at the end of the breeding season. Scores are ranked from 1 (immature) through 5 (cycling).