Knowing if a cow or heifer is pregnant is important because it can determine your profit. Free cows are considered useless because they consume food and produce nothing. Maintaining them is uneconomical and you will do well to get rid of them. Therefore, knowing if a cow is pregnant or not will allow you to understand if it is worth keeping or killing it or selling it as soon as possible.
Steps
Step 1. Observe them after conception
After mating season, or after the cows or heifers have been artificially inseminated, see if they show any signs of heat over the next 45 days. If they don't have a period every 21 days, they are probably pregnant.
- If they go into heat during this time, they are not pregnant.
- Pregnancy is also recognized by the enlargement of the belly, especially towards the end of gestation.
Step 2. 45 to 120 days later, have her checked by a veterinarian for pregnancy status
- There are four methods for doing this. They are listed below in order from the cheapest and most commonly used to the most expensive and least used:
- Rectal palpation
- Blood test
- Enzyme examination
- Ultrasound
- Your vet will likely use rectal palpation.
Step 3. Record the tag number, name, if the cow or heifer is pregnant or free, and how pregnant she is
Females who are not pregnant should be culled, as it will affect next season's profit.
Step 4. Free the bitches who took the test and move on to the next ones
Advice
- Use the best possible method recommended by your vet to check for pregnancy.
- Sell cows to be killed if they can't get pregnant. Pregnant cows sell for a higher price than free ones.
- Check all of your heifers and cows, even if you are sure of a boss's pregnancy.
- Cows in an advanced state of pregnancy are easy to recognize because they look like barrels with their heads and legs.
Warnings
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Some methods for recognizing pregnancy, such as rectal palpation, blood and enzyme tests, can produce false positives.
- Enzyme testing is more likely to give false positives or false negatives, especially if some steps are not performed perfectly.
- Blood tests can produce unreliable results if tubes are exchanged or if the sample is insufficient.
- Rectal palpation can produce false results if the person performing it is not experienced enough or does not know where to touch.
- Periods of heat during pregnancy are rare, but they can happen. Therefore it is strongly recommended to perform the tests twice.
