Beef Cattle workshop

Yesterday we had a great opportunity to attend a workshop on beef cattle handling and pregnancy checks on some of the heifers at the beef unit. I went a little early and helped Dr. Alley, a veterinarian from State do some pregnancy checks on a dozen of the heifers that had been bred by AI 60 days ago and then followed by a bull 25 days later. The conception rate for AI was about 60% which is about standard. All of the heifers had been synchronized with CIDR beforehand, which is a progesterone implant that we learned about in Reproduction and Lactation class. Hurray for practical applications! Dr. Alley also checked on a bull that had injured his penis during mating. For the workshop Dr. Alley and Dr. Poor showed how to properly herd cattle in a low impact and low stress manor which can increase the efficiency in moving a group of cows as well as decrease the probability of injury to both the cattle and the herder. The principles were based off of using distance and movement that were familiar to the cattle, such as moving in the same direction as the flow of movement to get them to slow down and moving in the opposite direction to get them to speed up. Dr. Alley didn't even have to use a stick, prod or even his voice to get them to move. He did a pregnancy check on the remaining 6 heifers and allowed me to go in after him and do a rectal palpation of a fetus that was about 45 days old. I even won a sweet hat with a Wayne Country Cattlemen logo on it as part of the door prize :) This afternoon will be spent at the Dairy Unit collecting some samples for a research project some grad students are working on at State about bacteria and mastitis.