There has been a huge uptake in breeding technology over the last couple of years, but what are the actual advantages?

In 2025 alone, 1,060 farms applied for TAMS support to purchase health and fertility monitoring equipment such as collars, tags, and boluses.

The technology has advanced to the stage where heat is being detected before the sharpest-eyed farmers can even detect it.

This is crucial in the modern era of farming, with more compact calving in place as well high usage of sexed semen, which must be used within a tighter window than conventional would be.

As well as that, most breeding technology has advanced to the stage where it no longer just identifies heat. Instead it can alert farmers about health issues, diet and mineral issues, and more.

The technology typically measures a range of behaviours, including side lying, low activity, medium activity, high activity, eating, rumination, walking, grazing, heavy breathing/panting, and general abnormal behaviour.

It then sends alerts to your phone or laptop if it notices any irregularities or heat activity, helping to save on missed heats, poor conception rates, and treatment costs.

Research

Teagasc recently published results from a study carried out across 19 herds in 2022 and 2023, where SenseHub breeding technology was used to determine estrus of cows post calving.

The research found that cows involved showing their first estrus at average of 34 days postpartum.

25% of them were early (less than 21 days), 51% of them were between 22-42 days, while the final 24% were late (after 42 days).

As well as that, the research found that cows that had at least one estrus before first insemination had pregnancy rates of 57%, compared to those who did not have an estrus that only achieved 47% pregnancy rates.

Normal cycle lengths also had an impact on fertility, with longer or shorter cycling cows having lower pregnancy rates.

Breeding technology

The research showed how complicated estrus can be, and how easy it can be to misjudge timings.

However, breeding technology can help identify estrus timing and abnormalities such as delayed estrus and irregular cycles.

This can help improve reproductive efficiency through accurately timed inseminations, well-designed synchronisation programmes, and cull cow strategies for anestrus cows.

Considering the uptake in sexed semen, and how sexed straws can cost up to and even over €50/straw, the precision of breeding technology was considered to be a 'promising strategy' by the researches.

Sexed semen is a tampered-with product, as the sperm cells are damaged during the sorting process, which means the viability of the sex-sorted sperm cells in the reproductive tract is shorter (less than 12 hours) than for conventional (over 24 hours).

Therefore we have seen a correlation between the uptake in sexed semen and the uptake in breeding technology, as accurate heat detection is needed to ensure the cow is inseminated with the 14-20 hours of the onset of heat.

If you are thinking of investing in collars this season, talk to your local dairy adviser to see which system will suit your herd best.

The adviser will also help you apply for TAMS on the collars, with the with the reference cost for a base station at €2,833 and the reference cost of collars at €134.70.