Artificial Insemination and Estrus Sync Protocols

The first thing you think about when you hear somebody say Estrus Sync, is probably something about hormones and cycles and medical jargon you don't really understand. You might also think about it being expensive, by the end of this, hopefully you are at least willing to look at the possibility of use in your herd.
The funny thing is in the beef business, is that most people don't AI to begin with, the dairy farmers, it's estimated that over 85% of the breeding done is AI,  now when you start talking beefalo specifically, a lot of people AI due to the limited availability of beefalo bulls. So the question becomes  how do you best utilize what semen you have? With AI, heat detection is the biggest problem, because not everybody has several hours a day to watch their cattle for weeks on end. With the best AI tech, and good heat detection, a 65% AI . How can you decrease your breeding seasons or rather, condense your calving season? Estrus Sync, there are many different protocols out there, and I'd suggest talking to your veterinarian as to which they would recommend, because some might work well for you, others might not. 
Here are some of the advantages to Estrus Sync

• Reduced time and labor
• Increased efficiency of semen use
• More condensed calving

Basically, the concept is to force the cows to ovulate and with one of three methods, to breed them. Either straight heat detection, or heat detection, and then time AI any that weren't caught in heat, or to just time AI. Say you have 100 heifers, with a good protocol and good heat detection, you should be able to catch about 85% in heat, and with a 65% AI success rate, you would have about 55 of those heifers successfully bred. That is over half of the herd, within a time span of maybe 2 weeks. and all bred within about a 3 day time-span. Maybe it would be worth looking into for use in your herd!

My last comment, is please do not attempt to use estrus sync on cows that are less than 50 days post-calving, because you will have a very low success rate, and it will cost you money unnecessarily. 

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