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Management Options to Influence Age at Puberty

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Management of replacement beef heifers should focus on factors that enhance physiological processes that promote puberty [62]. Procedures that ultimately affect lifetime productivity and reproductive performance of heifers begin before birth and include decisions that involve growth‐promoting implants, feeding, breed selection, calving and weaning date, social interaction, sire selection, and exogenous hormonal treatments to synchronize or induce estrus. This is especially relevant in systems where heifers are expected to calve by two years of age or where the breeding period is restricted [36]. Heifers that calve as two year olds produce more calves in their lifetime than heifers that calve as three year olds [63]. Breed and postweaning rate of gain have a large influence over onset of puberty [36]. For optimal fertility, heifers should not be bred at their pubertal estrus as calving rate has been reported to be 21% less than for heifers bred at third estrus [64]. This implies that heifers should reach puberty within one to three months before the age at which they will be bred in order to mitigate the reduced fertility associated with breeding at pubertal estrus.

Bovine Reproduction

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