THE ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY OF USING HEIFERPLUS SEMEN IN DAIRY FARMS

Stelian SERTU¹, Vlad BER²
UNIVERSITY OF AGRONOMIC SCIENCES AND VETERINARY MEDICINE OF BUCHAREST¹
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE FOR BOVINE BALOTESTI²
Cor­re­spond­ing author email: sertu_stelian @ yahoo.com
Abstract: This work aims to increase the eco­nom­ic effi­cien­cy of dairy farms by improv­ing the fecun­di­ty indi­ca­tors and increas­ing the num­ber of cows obtained. The research was car­ried out in the con­text in which the slaugh­ter age of cows has decreased to 2.8 lac­ta­tions, and the herds of dairy cows in our coun­try are in a pro­por­tion of 93% held in hold­ings of up to 5 heads, which endan­gers the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of these farms. In the con­text where 0.8% of cattle/year are obtained from a cow, of which only 0.6% are viable and accord­ing to the ratio between the sex­es, only 0.3% of cat­tle are born and the exchange of gen­er­a­tions in this species is high, 4.8 years , the use of new semen pro­cess­ing tech­nolo­gies is required. One of these tech­nolo­gies is Heifer­Plus. This tech­nol­o­gy uses con­ven­tion­al sperm enhanced with cer­tain enzymes that capac­i­tate sper­ma­to­zoa car­ry­ing X or Y chro­mo­somes depend­ing on the desired direc­tion. The work was car­ried out at the Research and Devel­op­ment Insti­tute for Bovine Balotesti, on a herd of 89 heads, cows of the Roman­ian Black Spot­ed breed, where the effi­cien­cy of the use of Heifer­Plus semen was ana­lyzed. From the ana­lyzed data, an increase in fecun­di­ty was found by 4.03% and the pro­por­tion of females obtained was 57.5%. In these con­di­tions, the use of Heifer­Plus sperm is rec­om­mend­ed because by increas­ing fecun­di­ty, pro­duc­tion costs decrease by reduc­ing calv­ing inter­vals and obtain­ing more cat­tle ensures the maintenance/increase of exist­ing herds.
Key­words: eco­nom­ic effi­cien­cy, cows, Heifer­Plus semen
JEL clas­si­fi­ca­tion: Q01, Q19,Q55