Influence of suckling and sire presence in the productive and reproductive performance of brown swiss cows in the humid tropic

The experiment was carried out in "Las Animas" ranch located in Tuxtla Chico Municipality, Chiapas, Mexico, in order to estimate the interaction between retarded suckling and sire presence used as a strategy for reducing the time between calving and conception in 40 pure Brown Swiss cows under dual purpose system. A completely randomized design was used, with four treatments and ten repetitions with a factorial arrangement with two factors in two levels, being type of suckling (traditional and retarded) and sire presence and absence, comparison of means was done with Tukey test. Treatments were; T1 (n=10): Traditional suckling without sire presence (AT-ST), T2(n=10): traditional suckling with sire presence (AT+T), T3(n=10): retarded suckling without sire presence (AR-ST) and T4(n=10): retarded suckling with sire presence (AR+T). Results showed that AR+T reduced (P<0.05) the calving-conception interval to 84 +/- 10.19 days compared with 100 +/- 13.35, 190 +/- 34.84 y 156 +/- 20.63 days for AR-T, AT+T and AT-T respectively. It is therefore concluded that the combined practice of suckling retarded (30 minutes) eight hours after milking and exposing the cows to the sire as of seven days after calving could be an alternative to reduce post-partum anestrus and increasing reproductive efficiency in dual purpose system.