The use of imaging ultrasound for determining the pregnancy status of cattle offers significant advantages over the manual testing method and the advantages are detailed hereunder.

• Earlier detection of pregnancy/non-pregnancy status; Testing can be conducted 30 days after the end of joining.
• Greater accuracy. Trans-rectal ultrasound pregnancy examinations are more accurate than manual palpation because the pregnancy is easier to image than it is to palpate in animals that present poorly for examination.
• More accurate aging of the foetus The age of the foetus can be readily determined and this capability enables:
• The separation of AI from backup pregnancies;
• The identification of bulls suspected of failing to get their cows pregnant;
• The allocation of heifers into early, mid and late calving groups;
• The asking and answering of two questions for each cow and heifer:
      Question 1: How long did it take you to get into calf for the first time?
      Question 2: How long did it take you to get back into calf?
   
• Facilitates strategic management decisions with the cattle:
• Early identification of pregnant and late calving females in the face of:
• Diminishing pasture availability;
• Windfall and unforeseen marketing opportunities;
• Suspected problems with the joining.
   
• With trans-rectal imaging ultrasound, it is not necessary to handle the bovine uterus during the course of a pregnancy examination.
• There is an important consideration for situations in which joining has started and where pasture conditions are falling away as joining progresses or where the pasture scenario is unfavorable. This situation can give rise to the following, puzzling question. Do I increase the length of joining to take account of the pasture scenario (but by so doing increase the time that I have to hold onto all my cows until the non-pregnant ones can be identified)? OR Do I shorten the length of joining and pregnancy test as soon as possible so as to "lighten off" sooner?

 
There is an alternative strategy. The first step in this plan of action is to decide that date after which you do not want   any more calves to be born, after which they are "late calves" and are generally unacceptable to you. The next step is to leave the bulls with the cows until the day they are to be scanned. ALSS will choose the day on which scanning is to be conducted and then arrange a date for scanning that will be suitable to you. On that day, it will be possible to identify all of the pregnant cows that will calve close to the date that you have determined is acceptable. The other cows, those that are not showing as pregnant on scanning day, may very well be pregnant but not showing because the pregnancies are too small to be visible to ultrasound. However, these cows are also those that give birth to the "late calves" and can be the ones to go by being sold as "de-pastured with bulls"