EMBRYOS-- natural heats or synch?

One more question on the topic of implanting embryos.  Has anyone noticed much difference in conception rates between implanting frozen embryos off of natural heats versus synching a group? 

We sync all of our embryo's

We sync all our recips as well. A local Red Angus breeder flew to Alabama a couple years ago and took a week course in implanting embryos. He has been implanting his own embryos and he is thinking his success is due to his implanting on natural heats. He purchased a set of 4 embryos from me, and got 4 calves in 09. These were the first he implanted himself. He purchased 3 more last year and he thinks he has 3 pregnancies out of 3 implanted. He has been implanting some for others, and implanting on natural heats and they seem to be very pleased. This year, if I can talk him into this, I am going to try to compare a set of embryos implanted into a set of synch'd recips, against another set that were implanted using natural heats. Of course the ET vets tell you that there should be no difference.

I think the multiple trip charges to have the ET guys come out would add up in a hurry if we implanted on natural heats.    They did say to watch for heats on the non synched cows during the same time we were watching on the synched cows.    If any cycled during that period of time, they could be implanted with the rest.  That never had worked out for us.

We go with natural heats as our vet told us the conception rate is better. They charge us $50 per trip and if there is more than one to implant, no extra charge. It can add up but a lot less needles and handling needed.

Jill said:

We sync all of our embryo's

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Sorry, I meant recips.  We use the same facility as Kanshow and it is 2 hours away so can't really do it any other way, we have put them in on natural heats and haven't had as much luck with that, but we use someone here for that so it may just be the difference in the tech.

I think the results are the same, but even if they are lower with synched heats, I can get a more cows in heat and more ET calves by synching the recips.