Breeding soundness exams: Do ’em!

– W. Mark Hilton, DVM, PAS, DABVP (beef cattle), Clinical Professor Emeritus, Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine

Talk to any veterinarian who does a significant amount of beef work, and he or she will have stories of a group of cows that went “0 for” at pregnancy check.

Maybe it was a group of heifers with the yearling bull that had zero out of 12 bred, or a group of 30 cows with a mature bull that “got them all pregnant each of the past three years.”

My first case was just six months into practice, when I went to sleeve a group of 25 cows that spent almost three months with a rented bull.

When the first cow that walks into the chute is open, it causes a little angst. When it is the first four, we start thinking, “Oh, no.”

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