Author Archive

Scanned a suckler herd consisting of 28 cows in County Cavan. 4 cows were not cycling and 4 cows were pregnant to A.I. Of the remaining 21 animals exposed to a bull, 2 were confirmed pregnant. The cows were classified as reproductively sound using scanning therefore the stock bull had to be subfertile or infertile […]

Scanned a suckler herd consisting of 28 cows in County Cavan. 4 cows were not cycling and 4 cows were pregnant to A.I. Of the remaining 21 animals exposed to a bull, 2 were confirmed pregnant. The cows were classified as reproductively sound using scanning therefore the stock bull had to be subfertile or infertile […]

Visited a Pedigree Angus Breeder in County Cavan. The client presented suckler cows grouped in 2 different pens for reproductive assessment by scanning. In 1 pen 2 cows bred on the 26/03, underwent embryonic death on day 35 after service. The farmer acknowledged that he had fed this pen of cows a bale of silage […]

Visited a Pedigree Angus Breeder in County Cavan. The client presented suckler cows grouped in 2 different pens for reproductive assessment by scanning. In 1 pen 2 cows bred on the 26/03, underwent embryonic death on day 35 after service. The farmer acknowledged that he had fed this pen of cows a bale of silage […]

Visited a dairy farm outside Derry where 220 dairy cows were presented for scanning.  There was clinical evidence of 10% embryonic death among cows diagnosed pregnant.  This was unacceptably high.  This maybe partially explained by the fact that results of a milk test recently showed that there was at least one persistently infected (PI) cow […]

Scanned 35 heifers on a dairy farm outside Derry where the client had used sex semen for a period of two months and then introduced stock bulls.  Of the 35 heifers presented today, 30 were in calf to sex semen and of those, 28 were female and 2 were male.  Sex Semen has a place […]

Visited a dairy client in County Antrim with a pedigree Holstein herd.  We foetal sexed 32 pregnancies between 51 and 120 days of gestation with 7 females and the remainder as males.  The client was very disappointed as he had used expensive sires to generate these pregnancies.  He also aspired to creation of an elite […]

On a farm visit outside Maghera, Co. Derry today, visited a client with approximately 200 cows.  This client is planning to install three robotic milkers for his 200 cow dairy herd.  The robotic arms will in this case service 200 cows for each milking and the plan is that cows with a high genetic potential […]

Visited a pedigree Holstein breeder with a rolling herd average of 10,000 litres in 305 days where he presented a group of first lactation cows which were AI’d using sex semen in the first week of April.  In 19 first lactation cows, 10 pregnancies were diagnosed and in two of these animals, twins were diagnosed.  […]

Visited a client in County Laois who wanted pregnancies sexed following a super ovulation and embryo transfer programme with pedigree Limousine cows.  The four pregnancies were established following the complete procedure.  Foetal sexing revealed three female and one male pregnancy.  The client wanted female pregnancies as the donor cow had excellent maternal traits and there […]