The Economy of Puberty and Early Pregnancy Diagnosis in Nellore and Nellore X Angus Females

Abstract

Cash flows were developed to verify, over a 15-year period, the effect of anticipating puberty (using feedlot and nutritional supplementation) and pregnancy diagnosis (using conventional transrectal ultrasound or color Doppler) on the net present value (NPV) of farms dedicated to producing Nellore (Bos taurus indicus) or Nellore x Angus (Bos taurus taurus) crossbred calves. In addition, in order to determine the effect of input prices on the viability of the enterprise, an economic analysis was carried out with the historical prices paid and received by Brazilian farmers over a 10-year period. Multiple regression was the statistical technique used to construct models that adequately described the relationships between the various independent variables (genetic group, nutritional strategy, pregnancy diagnosis technique, and relative market prices) and the dependent variable, which was represented by the NPV economic indicator. The fact that Nellore x Angus females reached puberty earlier than Nellore females favored the number of weaned calves and therefore, the NPV of the enterprise. Conducting pregnancy diagnosis earlier increased the project’s NPV by R$ 2.7 million (≈ US$ 0.77 million). Although feedlot and supplementation represent 65% of production costs, obtaining reasonable growth rates by providing animals with proper feeding improved the NPV significantly. Finally, after analyzing the effect of historical prices of the main inputs in the system, we concluded that the cost of inputs affects the performance of the enterprise the most.