 This slide kind of goes over the use of reproductive technology in the beef herd, and I went through all these potential benefits, but how many people are actually using this technology? These first two lines, and let me move my mouse around here, see if you can see. These numbers right here, this shows us that less than 8% of operations in the U.S. are using estrosynchronization and AI, so there's got to be some reasons why they're not using this stuff. Another couple things to point out from this slide. This number right here, we've probably heard time after time after time about the importance of keeping our feed costs down, and this number tells us how many people are actually preg-checking before they're starting their winter feeding operations, so that's less than 20% of the producers in the United States. So from a standpoint of controlling cow costs, if your feed costs are about 50% to 60% of your fixed costs in a beef cow calf enterprise, it tells you that about 80% of the people in the U.S. are overfeeding spending extra money on those cows. Another thing to point out here is this number down here that looks at semen evaluation, so less than 20% are doing semen checks on their bowls prior to turnout. We all know that this can lead to a train wreck if there is something in terms of fertility, if a bull gets injured and a semen's no good, he can't get those cows pregnant. So people are not using these estrosynchronization and AI technologies. So the question that I have is why? And this was a nationwide survey, the National Animal Health Monitoring Survey that was done, and what they do is they go out and they talk to people about whether or not they're using certain technologies and how many calves they had die, and in addition to that, they say, well, why aren't you using these technologies? So kind of resoundingly, the things that came back and it should be no surprise, time and labor was a major concern. So we don't have the time to do these things, we don't have the labor to do these things, and quite frankly, these protocols are just too complicated. If those two things were taken under consideration, if they were taken care of, producers 55% of them said, if you can take care of the time and labor concerns and the complication concerns, 55% of them would consider using. So other things that our cost goes with everything we do in beef production, the thing I can do to make the most money today is spend the least. So with that in mind, cost is always a concern. Facilities, you've got to have good facilities to make these things work. This one that says they don't work quite simply, this is a reflection on some of the early estrus synchronization protocols that were out there, and honestly, they didn't work. So people who had a bad taste in their mouth from some of those early systems, they couldn't get the protocols to work for them, so they sure as heck aren't going to try them again. So now we're going to talk about the estrus cycle and what we would normally expect a beef female to go through. This is my beautiful artwork drawing here, and it's got a reproductive tract of a cow. This is what we've got. We've got a cervix right here. This is our uterine body, so if we're going to actually AI a cow, semen deposition is right in this area. But there's two main things that we are concerned with. These are the ovaries of our cow. Two main structures on the ovaries that we're concerned with from a reproductive standpoint. One is a corpus luteum, and the other is a follicle. So a corpus luteum is an organ that develops and secretes the hormone progesterone. Our follicle is a blister-like structure on an ovary that contains our oocyte, or egg, that follicle ovulates, and we get the egg to release. The egg is caught here, kind of flows down the ovidux, actually sperm comes in, comes up the ovidux, fertilization happens right about here. So once that follicle ovulates, a CL is developed in its place. I cut some of these structures out of a cow. This is what they look like. Corpus luteum is Latin. It means yellow body, and that's exactly what it is. It's just this yellow kind of glandular structure, and this is what that follicle looks like, just a soft blistery structure. So in a normal estrus cycle, mature beef cows is about 21 days. You get into some heifers, and that's probably around 19 days. You get into some dairy cattle that numbers out there 23, 24 days. But I'm going to go through kind of a structure, a sequence of events of what happens and this is going to seem like it's a little textbook, but it's important to understand this stuff so we can tell how our estrus synchronization protocols are working. So it starts with estrus, and about 30 hours after a cow is in standing estrus, she actually ovulates. So that's our ovulation right here. When we talk about human medicine and controlling the menstrual cycles of women, people come into metapause. We always talk about estrogen, estrogen replacement therapy, all kinds of stuff about estrogen. Well, in cattle, progesterone rules. So progesterone, again, produced by the CL, and it really spikes about five to six days after an ovulation. When that CL develops, and it maintains itself all the way out until just before her next estrus cycle. Estrogen is, of course, in the cows. It peaks around ovulation, and then it maintains fairly low levels all the way through until our progesterone goes down, then our estrogen spikes up. The key signal for a cow to actually sit there and show standing estrus is this absence of progesterone and kind of a threshold level of estrogen. So she's going to ovulate, or she's going to stand in estrus right in here. Follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone. These are two things released by GNRH. Follicle stimulating hormone is responsible for follicular development. So follicles start with a whole bunch of little follicles. As they get bigger, we can see them kind of dropping off here, start with a bunch, and they get bigger but a smaller number. And these follicles kind of grow in wave-like patterns. So the hormone responsible for that is follicle stimulating hormone. Luteinizing hormone tells that cow to ovulate, so it spikes right here along with the estrogen that causes our ovulation. The other big thing that we're concerned with is this one in red, prostaglandin. Now prostaglandin, we'll get into the actual trade names of the drugs, but prostaglandin is released by the uterus and it is responsible for killing that CL. So you see when our prostaglandin comes in, progesterone goes straight down. So that's it. Those are the textbook hormones and what they do. Now let's go on with something you'd actually care about, what I'll term the big three. These are the only three things you need to know to control bovine estrus cycles. The first one is GNRH. We come back here. I told you GNRH is responsible for follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone. All of these big three hormones we're going to talk about, they're all natural. They happen in these cows almost every day of their life. So if people talk to you about giving all these crazy things to cattle, just remember similar to BST and dairy cattle, the hormones are actually already in the cattle circulating naturally. So when we give GNRH, we're basically telling that cow, you're in heat right now. That's what that one does. Next one we're going to talk about prostaglandin and we drew a big X through that. Prostaglandin says you're not pregnant. This is very effective in cattle when they have a mature CL. It's very effective in women. So if ladies out there are using these drugs, the nature of this hormone is it is a fat soluble hormone. That means if you put it on your skin, it will absorb through and get into circulation. So there are some cases where people use prostaglandin on women in not very nice ways, and it does indeed result in abortions of pregnancies. And then the last one is progestin or progesterone. That basically says you're stuck at a red light. As long as there's progesterone there, a cow is not going to cycle. That's just the way it is. So those three things are the basis for controlling all of our estrus synchronization protocols that are available in the United States. So GNRH, these are the trade names. Sister Allen, Fertigil, Factral, Ovisist. They're basically all the same. They're the same product. Not much difference. I get questions a lot about whether one is better than the other. And I haven't seen any research that tells me one is better than the other. What I typically do is I go out and look for which one I can get at the best price. Again, these release LH and FSH. I highlighted this H in red because, again, that cow is in heat, H for heat. GNRH causes ovulation. FSH starts a new follicular wave. One thing about GNRH, Dave Buchanan just walked in the room, Carl, so we've got him here. Size matters. When we look at the difference between cows and heifers, we've got an obvious size difference. Cows are a little bit bigger. Heifers are a little bit smaller. Well, everything goes with their internal parts as well. So cows have larger follicles. And therefore, GNRH actually works better on those follicles and cows than it does in heifers. If you give GNRH cows at random stages of the estrus cycle, you're going to have between 70% to 80% of these animals ovulate. If we do the same thing in heifers, we're only down to 40% to 60%. So there's a big discrepancy in the way this stuff works in cows and in heifers. Prostaglanin, you can read the trade names on there again. You give this stuff to an animal if she's pregnant. Quite likely she will not be pregnant after you give it. So this is real important if you're starting some of these estrus synchronization protocols. You've got to know where your cattle are. If you've got some different breeding seasons, maybe there's some purebred stock that get bred a little bit early. If you give a shot of prostaglanin, quite likely you're going to lose that pregnancy. There are some things we can do to try to rescue it. We can talk about those later if you've got questions. But basically, it kills this mature CL and it's effective from roughly day 5, 5.5 all the way out to day 18 of the estrus cycle. Note about this stuff. Again, it works on a mature CL. So if we don't have a mature CL, if a cow is not cycling, this product is not going to do anything for us. At the beginning of any breeding season, you've got roughly, you know, upwards of 60 to 70% of cows that are not cycling. And again, there's quite a variation there. But a high percentage of cows, this will do nothing to. When we get into the progestins, now progestin you probably don't recognize that name, but you recognize these names. So cedars, plastic insert, kind of coated in silicone with progesterone embedded into it. MGA is Melangestral Acetate, a feed additive given in feed of cattle. Norgestimate, this was part of the old Decorimate B protocol, and this is an ear implant that you stuck in. When you wanted the progesterone to go away, you had to go in and cut that ear implant back out. They were a real joy to work with. Basically, again, stop cattle from showing heat. Once these products are removed, so you pull out a cedar, you stop MGA, you pull out the ear implant for an adjustment, these cattle start showing heat as soon as they don't have a CL anymore. Another thing that these products do is if you've got cows that haven't started cycling after estrus, or after calving rather, or you've got heifers that just simply haven't come into heat yet, these protocols, or these products, can initiate cyclicity in some of these animals. So that's why they're real handy to have in our estrus synchronization protocols. So this is our little drawing again when we talk about controlling that estrus cycle. We're going to go through the mode of action of these different hormones, just a visual, so you can see that again. Prostaglandin, we said that you're not pregnant when you get that. So prostaglandin is going to come in here, act on our CL. The next product, GnRH, says you're in heat right now. You give that product, it's going to act right here on our follicle. It's going to cause an ovulation roughly 30 hours after that product is given. And then the final one that we're going to talk about, oh, after follicle ovulates, she gets a new CL developed at the point where that follicle was. Progestin, so that's basically going to mimic progesterone, and as long as progestin's there, she's not going to ovulate. So that's the basis for controlling all of our estrus cycles. Again, there's some differences in noncycling cows and cycling cows. You give GnRH, axon follicles, so it's pretty effective in both classes of cattle. Prostaglandin is going to act on a CL and a cycling cow, do nothing to a noncycling cow. Acedar, it's going to keep both of them from ovulating and potentially initiate cyclicity in this noncycling cow. So AI, you guys are probably fairly familiar with this. This is the south-facing end of a north-facing cow. There's been a lot of time there, but basically you put your arm in the rectum, fix the cervix, thread a pipette through and deposit the semen right in that uterine body. When we talk about timing of AI, it's fairly important that we breed at a specific time. A cow comes into standing heat roughly 27 hours after she's in standing heat, so just shy of 30 hours, she ovulates. And that egg is in there, and that is fertile, potential to be fertile, until up to 40 hours after that. So this is where the whole AMPM rule comes in. Say we want to breed 12 hours after she starts standing estrus. If we breed right at the time she starts standing estrus, if we look at the normal fertile life of our sperm, we may miss this end of her fertile egg life. So that's why there's a delay in coming 12 hours after standing estrus. So when it comes to heat detection, heat detection is more of an art than it is a science. Primary sign of estrus is that cow is standing there to be mounted. You got all of these secondary signs that we also need to start looking at. So chin resting, they're just resting their chin on the next cow over. They're doing a lot of vocalizing. They're running around not eating. They're curious. If we get real close and look, swollen vulva, bloodshot eyes, those of you who have had experience in heat detecting, you can look at this cow. She is a great candidate just looking at how curious she is. She's got her ears pinned back. Quite likely this cow is in heat, but we really want to look and see if she is standing to be mounted to be 100% sure. When we look at cow herds, the more cows that you've gotten a group, the more cows that are in estrus, the more likely they are to stand for each other. When I look at this, the standing events, some cows only stood for one mount. That was the only standing estrus that they ever showed. This happens when you've got very few cows in that pin. This is the other extreme. This cow stood 179 times during her standing estrus. So you could go out there about any point in the day and see that cow standing. Again, we talk about stage of the estrus cycle. The closer a cow gets to being in estrus, the more likely she is to stand and show some of these secondary signs of estrus. There are a lot of heat detection aids out there for us. These are the Kmar heat detectors. We start out, glue this thing to the tail head of a cow and we've got it white. Once the cow has been mounted, a little glass vessel in there turns red. This is some tail chalk way more common in the dairy industry. Estrus Alerts, they work pretty well. Kind of like a lottery ticket. So they start out with this gray covering over the top as they get mounted that stuff scratches off and it becomes all orange. This is a real fancy one. This is called the Heat Watch System. There's a little sensor in here. Every time a cow is mounted that sends a signal to a computer it'll tell you how many times she was mounted, at what time she was mounted, how long the other cow was on her. Real easy way to do heat detection. There are actually some commercial operations out there that have them, but for all practical purposes there are a research tool. These are a fun research tool too. Heat detection aids in November work well, but we breed our cattle in June, July. So we don't have that option. Okay. Coming into the actual Estrus synchronization protocols this is some of the first stuff that was developed. Jim Lauderdale kind of put Prostaglandin into action in the early 1970s. So this was the first synchronization protocol that really worked kind of well. So you just give a shot of Prostaglandin. Remember it only works in cows that are cycling at the beginning of breeding season. You check heat before you give it. Check heat after. Breed anything that comes into Estrus. So since then there's been a little bit of work that's looked at. Remember the producer concerns. Time and labor and complication. All these protocols have been developed since then and quite frankly in my mind that seems kind of complicated. So how do we begin to pick which protocol is out there. All of these were developed within the last 15 years. So protocols got to be good. Bottom line is it has to work. If it doesn't work people aren't going to use it again. They're going to spend their time and effort somewhere else. So when I say it's got to work what we want to do is minimize the number of time people are handling cattle. Modern protocols. We've got that down to three times. So you handle three times. Everything gets bred. We got to keep that number down. The other thing and this is kind of from consumer perspective standpoint as well as the betterment of our own industry. We don't want to be given 25 injections if we don't have to. We want to minimize this number but it's still got to be effective. And again I kind of alluded to the fact that we've got a portion of cows that are cycling at the beginning of the breeding season. A portion that are not cycling. We need these protocols to address both of those classes of cattle. You've got several different types of protocols. Again, we talked about heat detection. The other extreme would be fixed time insemination so you don't spend one minute checking heat and cattle. You just bring everything through the chute, bring them all at the same time. And then there's protocols kind of in this class that are a combination. You heat check for a while, say maybe three days and then go ahead and breed these cattle with timed AI after that. Anything that didn't come into heat. A good source of information about protocols has been the beef reproductive task force. This is a group of university scientists, industry professionals. They sit down. Remember that screen I showed you had 25 some odd synchronization systems on it. While this group sits down and say alright, what's going to work for our beef producers. So within those three types of systems, those that require heat detection, those that require a fixed timed AI and those that have a combination of both of those. This group sits down and says what works in our beef cattle in the most places throughout the country and throughout the world. So these are recommended protocols by that group. You'll find these in the back of every AI catalog. Every stud company has got them. We can also find them online. Protocols that make it to these lists to these recommendations they're going to work well for you. So probably the most common protocol that I get questions on also the one that I recommend to the most people especially if you're going to be AIing mature cows is to come in and use what they call a 7 day co-sync plus cedar protocol. So recall that GNRH is going to ovulate a follicle. It's going to develop a CL. We put a cedar in at the same time. So this vaginal implant that's got progesterone in it. We do this because without this cedar in you're going to get a whole bunch of cows that's a whole bunch. About 20% of your cows in a herd are going to come into heat right in here 5 to 7 days and then right after this prostaglandin shot. So if you're going to do a true time insemination and you've got cows that are coming into heat here those cows are not going to become pregnant. So putting a cedar in this protocol really cuts that down. These cows won't eat. Everything will be much, much better synchronized. So for the price of a cedar you pick up another 20% of cows that are properly synchronized. So 7 days after you put it in pull the cedar out, give an injection of prostaglandin. 60 to 66 hours later and these are numbers for mature cows. When you get into heifers that number is going to be closer to 54 hours if you want to use this protocol on heifers but there may be some things that work better for heifers. So 60 to 66 hours later give everybody an insemination and a shot of GENERH. Works real well. This protocol you can read the name. Basically it's the same cedar protocol all they did was add an injection of prostaglandin 3 days before that GENERH. Now why in the world would you want to do this? Cedar cost 10 bucks you know I've seen them 9 to 11 dollars by putting this injection of prostaglandin here if you've got a whole bunch of cattle cycling if you want to heat check for 3 days you can get upwards of 30% of your cows to show heat here that means it's a 30% savings on all the rest of this stuff so that's an option for those of you who've got a good proportion of cycling cows you don't mind heat checking it could be a significant savings in terms of the rest of the synchronization products after that I told you that heifers respond differently than cows kind of the gold standard for heifer development heifer breeding protocols is to use MGA again MGA is a feed additive so you feed it for 14 days right after you stop feeding it all these cows are going to come into heat right here if you breed them it's going to be a train wreck hardly any of them pregnant and that's because the follicle that's supposed to have ovulated right here is still hanging out here you stop the MGA she's going to ovulate that follicle but the egg inside of it is dead already so that's why you don't get a lot of pregnancies right at this point so you wait 19 days give an injection of prostaglandin about 72 hours later come in, generate, breed this is a protocol in heifers now, those of you thinking well, I don't like that protocol you're probably right if you're breeding heifers in June, July they're out on pasture this protocol works great for dry lot animals that have the operators got a TMR because we need to be sure that all those heifers are eating their MGA if you're out on pasture and you're given MGA it's quite likely there's a lot of heifers that are going to turn their nose up at it and say, I'm not eating that stuff I don't blame them so dry lot, TMR every heifer eats the same amount that is the best way to make this MGA protocol work another benefit of this protocol is it's going to cost you less than a dollar for all the MGA for all those 14 days it's actually going to cost you about a quarter for just a product alone so if you're on pasture there's got to be some other options for you and this is the same exact protocol except with the cedar in it again, cedar costs you 10 bucks so that's why people are a little bit hesitant to do that but you hold that cedar in there for 14 days wait a specific amount of time and go ahead and time breed those cattle after that so those protocols work real well with heifers if you've got questions about the different protocols that are out there this is a program that I would recommend people to go and start looking at basically the astrosynchronization planner gives you all the different specifics of the protocol so when to give injections what time to give injections it lets you review all the different protocols that are available and then once you choose a protocol you put in certain data like how many cows you have what the cost of your drugs is going to be what time and what day do you want to breed and it'll print out all these things with all the daily activities that you need to do what time you need to do them how many cc's are the different drugs that you're going to be giving recommendations on things such as needles syringe types all this information so it'll give you daily activities a calendar like this and then you'll know when things need to be bred and it'll also do budget calculations for you so based on the different costs of drugs that you input into this it'll tell you in comparing one system to another how much those things are going to set you back at the end of the day so with that I've kind of used up my time I stayed away from the questions of whether you and your cows are ready for AI or not because Dave wants to talk to you too so I'd be happy to take any questions that you guys have now are there any questions for Carl? Carl, I have a question for you what's the typical AI synchronization expense? what type of cost does it usually range for Heffers? In Heffers again if you get the NGA in that protocol you're going to be able to do it for basically under 10 bucks plus the price of semen if you don't have MGA and you've got to go to something like a cedar I've done a lot of cost calculations on it those fixed time AI protocols a 7 day co-sync plus cedar that's going to set you back 35 bucks that includes semen that includes a bit of the labor and our conception rates would be expected what is good or reasonable? there's a lot of unreasonable expectations out there but I would say I would say 50% a lot of people will tell Heffers you should do better Heffers you should be up there 60-65% a lot of people are getting better results with the co-sync plus cedar protocol you're sitting there around 60-65% but realistically I'm not disappointed if I only get 50% pregnant and I give that conservative estimate because then people come back and say well I got 55 even better than I thought you would so that's why I give that number are there any other questions for Carl out on the group? yeah Carl this is a little more if I don't know much about this and I want to get started who would be the best resources to visit with would be a veterinarian a seamen seller who should I talk to who should I get to come out and help me with some of this stuff? I would say probably the most trained professionals out there now are those in the seamen industry they've also got a vested interest and I apologize if any of the seamen reps are in the crowd but they've got a vested interest in selling you these products they've got the technical expertise they know the mode of action they've got continuing education in these things they're doing pretty well there vets I've seen some vets that are very very good with this stuff and others that don't really want to bother with it so you can call your local vet and see what their experience level is but I've had some vets just shy away from them and then we've gone through some continuing education training with our agents if they feel they can answer those questions I'd be happy to help anybody who wants to learn more about these protocols and I'll see you next time thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one bye