The most recent issue of the Journal of Dairy Science has several papers regarding decreased fertility in dairy cattle, and the efforts to develop hormonal treatment regimens to improve fertility. Much of the recent work focuses on trying to reduce loss of fetuses during early pregnancy. This prompted me to search the literature about this extensive and important subject area. I suspect that Ut...

The objective was to evaluate the effects of pregnancy and bovine somatotropin (bST) on endometrial gene and protein expression related to maintenance of pregnancy in nonlactating dairy cows at d 17. In endometrial tissues, treatment with bST increased the steady state concentration of oxytocin receptor (OTR) mRNA; bST-treated cyclic (bST-C) cows had greater OTR mRNA than bST-treated pregnant (...

In a 4-yr study, molasses (M; 6% CP), molasses-urea (MU; 17.5% CP; 92% molasses, 4% urea and 4% water) and molasses-cottonseed meal-urea (MCSM; 17.5% CP; 73% molasses, 25% cottonseed meal, 1% urea and 1% water) were compared as winter supplements for Braford cows (514 matings) consuming low-quality forage. Cows were fed 1.35, 1.50 and 1.27 kg.head-1.d-1 of the respective supplements for 127 d b...

Despite the rapid growth in popularity of Jersey breed, most research on dairy cows United States has been done with Holstein breed. Postpartum uterine diseases negatively influence reproductive performance and limited data are available regarding predisposing factors for cows. Our objectives were to determine prevalence risk purulent vaginal discharge (PVD) its effect fertility lactating This ...

The objective was to validate the performance under field conditions of a novel commercially available ELISA for confirmation of pregnancy using measurement of pregnancy-associated glycoproteins in milk samples from dairy cows. The target population was cows previously diagnosed pregnant by veterinary examination and ≥ 60 d of gestation. On 8 farms milking Holstein cows, milk samples were colle...

In postpartum cows, ovulatory follicle size at time of insemination (GnRH/TAI) influenced pregnancy rates following TAI, but had no effect on pregnancy rates when cows spontaneously ovulated. Furthermore, cows that exhibited estrus (± 24 h of GnRH/TAI) had higher pregnancy rates compared to cows not in estrus. The objective was to assess the relationship between ovulatory follicle size and estr...

BACKGROUND In 2011, family planning (FP) services were integrated at Martin Preuss Centre (MPC), in urban Lilongwe, Malawi. To date, no previous study evaluated pregnancy rates among HIV-positive women after the integration of FP services into HIV care at the facility. In this study, we investigated whether integration of FP services into HIV clinical care led to increased use of contraceptives...

Early identification of nonpregnant dairy cows post breeding can improve reproductive efficiency and pregnancy rate by decreasing the interval between AI services and increasing AI service rate. Thus, new technologies to identify nonpregnant dairy cows early after artificial insemination (AI) may play a key role in systematic management strategies to improve reproductive efficiency and profitab...

Ovarian follicle development continues in a wave-like manner during the bovine oestrous cycle giving rise to variation in the duration of ovulatory follicle development. The objectives of the present study were to determine whether a relationship exists between the duration of ovulatory follicle development and pregnancy rates following artificial insemination (AI) in dairy cows undergoing spon...