Eliane Vianna da Costa-e-Silva

Human resources in artificial insemination of beef cattle: profile of managers and inseminators

The objective of the present study was to outline the profile of managers and inseminators involved in beef cattle artificial insemination programs to characterize the management processes involved in this activity. Additionally, by interviewing managers and inseminators, it was searched to detect particularities concerned to personal life and work that can be used to evaluate the quality of life of inseminators on farms. The open questions were analyzed by frequency of answer, after being grouped by similarity. Accordingly to the results, managers associate the concept of human resource management to work supervision, mainly, prioritizing technical factors such as professional experience and indexes in the selection processes, although problems in interpersonal relationships have been shown as the main reason for dismissal. In general, education level of the inseminators is not good because most of these workers studied only to the first series of primary school. Inseminators prefer conventional artificial insemination although they recognize that fixed-time artificial insemination can make animal handling on the farm easier. The performance of these workers seems to be determined more by interpersonal relationships than by the salaries.

Impact of the quality of life of inseminators on the results of artificial insemination programs in beef cattle.

The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effect of factors of personal life and work conditions on the results obtained by inseminators in conventional and fixed-timed artificial insemination programs in beef cattle. Inseminators from three farms (21 in the total) were interviewed and evaluated according to the general obtained pregnancy rates. The differences among the pregnancy rates obtained in the farms, motivation and its association with the obtained pregnancy rate and the effect of each variable of the groups of needs on the pregnancy rate at first insemination were evaluated. The open questions were grouped by similarity and then analyzed by frequency of the answers. Pregnancy rates obtained by the inseminators ranged from 12 to 57%, with a mean service index of 3.10 ± 1.62 doses/pregnancy. It was also observed that the satisfaction of biological, financial, and training needs was more intimately related to the pregnancy rate than the satisfaction of the other needs, although none had shown an antagonistic relationship with it. Factors concerned to life quality and to the work can be important in determining the performance of these professionals.

Comportamento sócio-sexual e de manutenção de touros nelore durante a estação de monta

Changes in the bull:cow proportion in natural breeding have been proposed, but there are not evaluations about the effect of these changes in the behaviour of Nellore bulls. The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that the increase of sexual activity of Nellore bulls, due to the highest heat incidence (HHI), changes the time of general activity of those animals depending on their social status in the group. Six Nellore bulls were distributed in three groups: one bull in a single-sire breeding group (1bull:60cows) and two in multiple-sire breeding groups - one with 2 bulls and 120 cows (cycling naturally) and the other group with 3 bulls and 180 females, 50 of which were synchronised. The behaviour of these animals was recorded during 120 hours, using continuous and direct observation with animal focal sampling. The dominance order influenced the time spent with sexual activities. Bulls under high heat incidence presented the largest sexual activities and the smaller grazing, agonistic interactions and other activities, there was no difference in rumination.