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F A R M S K I L L S
Sophie Throup
FarmSkills Manager
One of the key themes for FarmSkills this year is helping raise awareness and skills in Bull
Fertility and soundness training. From 20th June, in association with EBLEX in England and
QMS in Scotland, and with the generous support of CEVA Animal Health, workshops are
running throughout the country to highlight the importance of giving your bulls a thorough
MOT to check they're fit for business.
To date 14 workshops have run across the
country from Devon to County Durham
bringing training to over 100 delegates on
farms, in local auction marts and in veterinary
practices. Another 14 workshops are
planned in England and seven in Scotland
and Wales before the end of the year.
Keith Cutler from XLVets Endell Vet Group in
Salisbury helps explain why bull breeding
soundness examinations are so important.
Bull breeding soundness
examination
Managing reproduction effectively to achieve
optimum fertility is essential to the running of
a profitable cattle enterprise. In the dairy
herd effort is usually concentrated on the
female with male fertility being managed at
a distance by bull studs and through the use
of AI. Ensuring the capability and fertility of
'sweeper' bulls remains of great importance
however, as these are often used to:
In the beef suckler herd, where the use of
natural service is more common than in the
dairy herd, maintaining a tight calving
pattern is vital to the profitability of seasonally
calving herds, and so managing reproductive
efficiency and bull fertility assumes even
greater importance.
Although few bulls are sterile (incapable of
successfully impregnating cows) sub-fertility is
relatively common. It is not unreasonable to
expect a fully fertile stock bull running with fifty
normally cycling, disease-free cows to achieve
a 90% pregnancy rate after a nine week
serving period. Published work, however,
shows almost one in three stock bulls currently
in use fail to achieve this target, taking a
longer time to get fewer cows pregnant,
which has a profound effect on profitability.
A bull breeding soundness examination
carried out by your veterinary surgeon,
aiming to identify individual infertile and
subfertile bulls in advance of the breeding
season, allows appropriate action to be
taken and will frequently prove to be a very
worthwhile investment.
What does the FarmSkills
bull fertility workshop
involve?
The FarmSkills Bull Fertility workshops bring
small groups of 6-8 farmers together to
discuss why fertility matters and why testing is
important. An overview of infectious disease
and its impact on bull health is also covered,
as are the EBLEX Better Returns slides on
national benchmarking.
WORKING
TOGETHER
FOR A HEALTHIER FUTURE...
15
LIVESTOCK MATTERS
Bull fertility
and soundness
l
serve cows which are slipping in the
calving pattern
l
serve cows proving difficult to get
in calf
l
run with groups of maiden heifers
Rose Jackson, Scarsdale Veterinary Group running one of the bull fertility workshop days