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Recent Advances in Reproductive Efficiency

Artificial Insemination of Cattle

Department of Dairy Science, University of Illinois, Urbana

ABSTRACT

Artificial insemination offers one of the most effective means of improving reproductive efficiency. Although making improvements in reproductive efficiency in the cow population through artificial insemination in most respects is not much different than in natural mating, the potential with the male is enormous. Maximum reproductive efficiency is interpreted to mean—getting the maximum number of calves from the parent stock per unit of time.

To be sure, artificial insemination may be useful in insuring protection from disease for the cow, thus permitting a longer useful life and more frequent calving. However, earlier calving and subsequent shorter calving intervals through shorter gestation periods and optimal post-partum breeding intervals are usually as readily obtainable by natural mating as with artificial inseminaiton (34). With the male, on the other hand, artificial insemination brings ith it the possibilities of increasing the offspring of a desirable sire several hundred-fold.

Consider expressing reproductive efficiency by an equation proposed by the Cornell workers (14) some time ago: