Noel Griffin

Who?

Noel Griffin

owner

Where?

Waterford, Ireland

About the farm

215 cows
Sexed semen

Nedap solutions

Nedap CowControl

Sorting and Routing

Heat Detection

Health Monitoring

Herd Performance Trends

Results

66%

conception rate with sexed semen

Spot on

timing AI

Sexed semen

on heifers

Create the best conditions for sexed semen

As animal welfare and sustainability increase in importance on dairy farms, sexed semen can be used to adjust the calf crop of the national herd. In order to get the best return from the increased investment associated with sexed semen, it’s important to get the circumstances right at breeding time. And that’s where Nedap technology comes into play.

Massive impact

‘Currently, a farm using conventional AI for the start of the breeding season, followed by beef bulls, will on average have 27% female dairy calves, 27% male dairy calves, and 46% beef cross calves. By increasing the use of both sexed semen and beef semen, this could change to producing 27% female dairy calves, 3% male dairy calves and 70% beef cross calves. That change has a massive impact on the production of dairy bull calves, which will increase the sustainability of the national dairy herd,’ explains Fergal Maguire, Dairy to Beef Calf Specialist with Teagasc, the Irish state agency for research, advise and education in agriculture.

“We achieved 66% conception rate on the cows that got sexed semen.”

Spot on timing

Noel Griffin, who farms in Waterford, installed Nedap CowControl in early January 2021. He began using sexed semen that year and hasn’t looked back since. ‘With the data from CowControl, we were able to create criteria for the best candidates for sexed semen. We decided to use 35 straws of sexed semen, and it was used on cows that had shown at least two heats pre-breeding. Then, the cows had to be close to 14 hours since the start of heat at the time of AI. I knew from research that this was the best time to inseminate with sexed semen.

We achieved 66% conception rate on the cows that got sexed semen in 2021, which we were delighted with. We couldn’t have achieved these results without CowControl because it gave us the accurate data to get the timing of AI spot on, and with sexed semen that’s critical. If we’re investing in sexed semen, we want to give it the best chance possible to be effective, and CowControl allowed us to do that,’ expands Noel.

“CowControl gave us the accurate data to get the timing of AI spot on, and with sexed semen that’s critical.”

Expanding use of sexed semen
Noel increased the use of sexed semen in 2022 and will increase it again in 2023. ‘In 2022, we used sexed on 90 cows out of 215. We had 58% conception rate on the cows bred with sexed semen. The cows served conventional semen had conception rates of 62%. There’s no significant difference between the two when you have the data CowControl provides,’ Noel continues.

‘In 2021, we didn’t use any sexed on first lactation heifers, we just felt that they had enough biological pressures acclimatizing to lactation, and continuing to grow. But in 2022, we had 6 heifers that showed really strong heats early in the lactation, so we chanced sexed straws on them. Five out of the six held, so we’ll definitely be using sexed on heifers in 2023.’