17/07/2025
Why your cow is struggling to conceive:
Infertility is bad news to any farmer. It means more costs in disease treatment, low milk production and slow stock build due to culling of affected animals.
A cow is infertile when it is unable to deliver a viable egg, conceive after successful mating, or carry pregnancy to term and deliver a healthy calf.
Similarly, a breeding bull that cannot produce viable spermatozoa and deliver them into the female reproductive tract to fertilise the egg is categorised as infertile.
There are several of infertility in cattle, some of them complex involving a number of factors while others simple and straight forward in terms of diagnosis and management.
In cows, these factors hinder production of viable o**m (female egg), its fertilisation, implantation in the uterus, development to maturity of feotus and eventual delivery at term.
Causes of infertility can be developmental disorders, nutritional, environmental, management and infectious diseases. Other causes of infertility are heavy internal and external parasite infestations, high ambient temperatures and low body weight.
Good breeding records keeping can assist in timely diagnosis of infertility while properly designed breeding and culling programme can help reduce incidences of infertility in a herd.
Repeat breeder is a common term applied to a cow served for more than three times without conceiving. Repeat breeding, lack of heat or frequent heat are primary signs of infertility.
1. Developmental abnormalities:
There are many developmental abnormalities that interfere with anatomical structure or reproduction hormone production process directly causing infertility.
These abnormalities in cows can occur in the ovaries, oviduct, uterus, cervix, va**na or v***a. These conditions can result in disturbances in the pattern of hormone production, hinder fertilisation, implantation or mating.
The disturbance in hormonal patterns can further cause other conditions like
