Steer Planet - Show Steers and Club Calves Forum

This year we gave the the TAI a shot just due to convenience.  After seeing all the orange tags when we turned the bull out for the next cycle, I will be going back to watching for heats!!!!

We have a set of 30 CIDRS in right now for a TAI breeding on next Monday (week from today).  We're using the CIDR plus Cyst at insert, and Lut at pull on day 8.  Going to breed 72 hours later...  Wait a week and turn the bulls in. 

Will have a good idea about 9 months from now to see how that worked...

I dont think most people are very well informed on TAI.  Why is it a waste?  That dont even make sense.  There is definitely a place for TAI.  We have been using TAI for 13 years on our own cattle and conception rates have been the same as when we used to heat detect, about 60%.  Yes, 60% may sound low for heat detected cattle, but understand we were heat detecting 200 cows at a time on 500 acres!  There was a lot of cowboying and cussing going on back in the heat detect days.  Now, we gather the herd 3 times and we are done.  We coordinate it to be done in the cool morning hours and entirely avoid messing with the cattle in the heat of the day which has probably helped conception more than anything.  We have custom bred over 7000 head this year and over half of them have been bred on time.  Our clients love the simplicity of TAI and results have been very good with MOST of the preg rates being around that 50-57% ai and as good as 90% bred in the first 21 days.  The operators that implement TAI are generally large ranches that just dont have the man power to heat detect large numbers of cows on grass.  If I was breeding our cows in a dry lot situation, early in the spring before the daytime temps get too hot,  I would absolutely heat detect. 

I used the 7 day last year and we did well watching heat and this year i did my first time around on the time ai at 72 hours and we did not hit any. Our vet said to try 54 hours so i went back to 5 day heat detection and we stuck them all. I think its just what works for your cows thats all.

Kind of a followup subject but when is the earliest you've had a cow come in when you pull the CIDR? Usually is 2 days before one shows heat for us. We're synchronizing 30 at a time usually.

Use select synch with CIDR + TAI. I heat detect and breed for 72 hours then time breed the rest (with GnRH of course).  Gives every cow an opportunity to get pregnant.  Whole program yields 70-80% AI preg rate and 95+% after 45 days natural service following the AI. Open cows are culled unless they are extremely special.  Works for us. 

When you say day #8, are you really say day 7? B/C first day is day zero. We pull day 7, heat detect up until 72hours, anything that hasn't stood gets TAI with a shot of GnRH @ the time of insemination.