By Angela Lovell
Lance and Karyn Neilson had always thought there had to be a practical way to turn an average heifer into a better breeding cow. So, they contacted their Alma Mater, Olds College, to see if there was any research done on the topic.
“Basically, I was looking for an advantage for our farm,” Lance Neilson says. “I had a feeling there were probably some different things that had been studied in the past.”
He had expected to come away with some useful information from past studies to try out, but didn’t anticipate those initial conversations would lead to involvement in actual research studies at his farm.
Research scientist Dr. Désirée Gellatly at the Olds College Technology Access Centre for Livestock Production (TACLP) put together a two-year study that aimed to investigate the effect of relieving handling stress on reproductive efficiency in beef heifers. Previous studies had shown that stressed or excitable animals reduced their feed intake, while cortisol (stress hormone) levels often increased, which can have a negative effect on fertility. The main goal of Gellatly’s study, which took place at the Neilson’s farm, was to assess a low-cost strategy called handling acclimation on the stress and pregnancy rates of Angus crossbred heifers aged between 13 and 16 months.
“Firstly, we ran all 200 heifers through the handling system and took saliva samples to get a cortisol level reading from them. We also assigned them a temperament score based on how they acted in the squeeze and how fast they exited the squeeze,” Neilson says.
The heifers were then divided into two groups. The first group served as the control group, which meant the heifers were fed from a feed truck for the remainder of the study and not exposed to handling acclimation prior to breeding.
The second group was exposed to handling acclimation. It began with the same handler entering the pens for five days and adopting a soft-spoken approach while pail-feeding the heifers a small amount of grain. Subsequently, the heifers in this group were put through the handling system multiple times and held in the squeeze a little longer each time.
“The first time, we let them just pass right through, the second time we held them for five seconds and the third time for 15 seconds,” Neilson says. “After they exited the squeeze, we gave them all a little grain as a treat and then put them back in their pen. We repeated that three times, every two days.”
Once the handling acclimation period was completed, all the animals from both groups were brought together again. They were bred, pastured together and treated exactly the same from that time on.
Better conception rates
The heifers’ cortisol levels were checked at various times throughout the experimental period, with the last test done about four months after breeding on pregnancy check day. The experiment was repeated in the second year with a new group of heifers.
In the first year of the study, the acclimated heifers showed a 2.23 per cent increase in pregnancy rates compared to the control group, but in the second year, with a new group of heifers, that increase rose to 10.84 per cent. As well, the heifers that had been acclimated were 7.5 times more likely to become pregnant than the control heifers. Overall, all the acclimated heifers showed significantly lower cortisol concentrations due to reduced stress at handling.
Although the study didn’t track it, the Neilsons had 100 per cent conception rates on the acclimated animals in their second breeding season as well.
Although the increase in fertility was the ultimate goal of the study (and the most important outcome for the Neilsons), what they also found interesting was the effect on the animal’s behaviour when they had to move or sort them.
“We didn’t really think about that beforehand, because that wasn’t the goal of the project, but it was something that presented itself to us the next year as we were calving them out and dealing with them,” he says. “We had fairly quiet cows already, but it just made those acclimated heifers even easier to manage. If we had to bring one into the barn to help for whatever reason, we could tell the difference. They didn’t have that nervousness to them. They were calm and didn’t wreck up the straw, the pen stayed drier, and the newborn calf had a much better scenario.”
Passing the reasonability test
Something Neilson says he appreciated about working with Olds College’s TACLP was their understanding that anything they tried, even on an experimental basis, needed to be practical for a busy farm.
“Running 100 heifers through [the chute] in 20 minutes, that’s practical enough to implement on anybody’s farm, that’s not a difficult task,” he says. “Everything has to run through the reasonability test first; it has to be practical to implement on a full-scale farm in a reasonable way.”
For the last three years, the Neilsons have been involved in another research study with Olds College, where they massage a group of calves at birth and compare their performance against calves in a control group that weren’t massaged.
“For every second heifer or bull calf born, we massage them from their tail up to their head for about one minute just before we tag them at a day old,” he says. “After 10 to 20 seconds you’ll see the calf relax, their muscles stop being so tense and their tails start wagging.”
Although the data is still being compiled, after year one, the results clearly showed improvements in weight gain at weaning and less sickness in the massaged versus un-massaged calves.
All part of the best practices package
None of these practices are a silver bullet though, Neilson warns. Rather, they are just processes that form part of an overall low-stress handling program.
“If you are doing this acclimation process with these heifers, but then you’re just a very aggressive, high-stress handler in every other aspect, or if you tag your calves and massage them, but then you handle them aggressively afterwards, I don’t think you will see much improvement,” he says. “These are all part of a best practices way of doing things.”
The success of the research project has prompted the Neilsons to permanently adopt handling acclimation protocols for all the cattle they raise on their farm, and over the last three years they have had a 100 per cent pregnancy rate.
It has also led them to start a side business where they custom feed and acclimate heifers for other beef producers who are seeing similar results.
“We have one customer that jumped on and believed in the method right at the beginning and he’s never had an open heifer that’s been through our program, even as they get into their third or fourth calves,” Neilson says.
Neilson believes there are many benefits, beyond the measurable ones, to being involved in these types of on-farm research projects, but warns it can become addictive.
“We have changed a lot since we got involved with this research, and although we thought we had a pretty low-stress environment beforehand, we have become a lot better,” Neilson says. “The benefits go beyond what you expect at the start and as you start to see the results, you want to keep pushing forward and keep the improvements flowing.”