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A fundamental need of any livestock enterprise is reliable, predictable breeding. High fertility rates are crucial for producers, particularly in the dairy industry. Researchers at West Virginia University have received a $339,939 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture to explore ways to promote fertility in dairy cows through diet and nutrition.

“Nationally, dairy cows have pitifully low fertility rates,” said Matt Wilson, an associate professor of Animal and Nutritional Sciences in WVU’s Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences. Throughout the United States, which has approximately 9 million dairy cows, the industry is losing almost a billion dollars each year due to high embryonic loss.

“One culprit that has been identified is that they often have very low concentrations of progesterone, at levels insufficient to maintain pregnancy.”

Progesterone is the ‘hormone of pregnancy’ and is required for pregnancy to occur and be maintained in all animals. The concentration of progesterone is determined by the balance between the amount being produced and the amount being broken down, or catabolized.

Wilson and Marie Krause, an assistant professor of Animal and Nutritional Sciences in the Davis College, are working to understand how the cow’s hormonal regulatory mechanisms regulate the rate of progesterone breakdown. With this understanding, they will then try to reduce the rate of breakdown by feeding dairy cows diets that stimulate the secretion of hormones that reduce catabolism.

Infertility in dairy cows has negative consequences for producers and consumers, according to Wilson.

“For producers it increases the time it takes to initiate the next lactation and therefore increases production costs,” he said. “At the extreme, it leads to a fairly high turnover rate such that cows are removed from the herd while they are still fairly young and their potential for production is high.”

For consumers, it increases the cost of production and therefore increases the cost of dairy products. “Improving fertility rates would decrease costs related to culling and replacing unproductive animals,” Wilson explained.