By international standards, Ireland is a relatively small dairy producer. However, the industry plays a critical role to the national economy, accounting for approximately 3% of national gross domestic product. This paper presents insights into udder health and intramammary antibiotic usage on Irish dairy farms during 2003-2010, based on data from several sources. Three data sources were used, ...

Breeding objectives for beef cattle in Ireland were derived and used to define selection sub-indexes. The intention of the sub-indexes was to simplify selection decisions by commercial bull and semen buyers for situations where all of the resulting progeny are slaughtered, or when some female progeny are kept as replacement breeding cows. Separate sets of economic values for calving ease and ge...

BACKGROUND AND CASE PRESENTATION A three year old, second lactation Holstein dairy cow presented to the Scottish Centre for Production Animal Health and Food Safety, Glasgow University Veterinary School in November 2014 with a history of post-calving vulval/vaginal bleeding nine days prior to presentation, followed by a sudden reduction in milk yield. Subsequent investigations resulted in a dia...

A receptive uterine environment is a key component in determining a successful reproductive outcome. We tested the hypothesis that endometrial gene expression patterns differ in fertile and subfertile dairy cow strains. Twelve lactating dairy cattle of strains characterized as having fertile (n = 6) and subfertile (n = 6) phenotypes underwent embryo transfer on day 7 of the reproductive cycle. ...

Plasma alpha-tocopherol (vit E) and blood selenium (Se) concentrations in February were determined in samples from 314 dairy cows in Norway, selected to provide a representative subset of the Norwegian dairy cow population. Each sample was followed by a questionnaire with information about feeding of the cow at the time of sampling. The results were correlated to herd data and to calving and he...

While dry cow management is important for health, milk production and fertility information on drying-off procedures implemented on commercial dairy farms is lacking. Current drying-off management procedures on commercial dairy farms were evaluated using a questionnaire and results compared with recommendations given in the current literature. Ninety-one participants from a farmer education eve...

Fat and fatty acid metabolism and digestion in the dairy cow are of considerable interest, both to scientists and the dairy industry. This renewed interest is based on several reasons; first, the use of dietary fat supplements has increased, and will continue to do so, as nutritionists strive to increase the energy density of diets to meet requirements of the high producing dairy cow; second, w...

Considerable progress has been made over the last 30 years in the United States to develop systems that describe protein requirements and protein adequacy of diets for dairy cows. Ration formulation systems have moved from balancing diets for crude protein (CP) and digestible protein to the use of nutritional models (e.g., NRC, 2001; CNCPS, CPM-Dairy, and Amino Cow) that recognize that the cow ...

Introduction Milk somatic cell count is considered as an indicator for raw milk quality and udder health status in dairy cows (4, 6). Many approaches have been made to determine milk somatic cell counts in dairy cow and goat both in the field and laboratory including California Mastitis Test (CMT, a cow side test), Fossomatic cell count (FSCC), and Direct Microscopic Count (DMC) (1,7). These co...

BACKGROUND Mortality risk in Danish dairy cows has more than doubled since 1990 (from 2% in 1990 to 5% in 2005). Until now, registrations about dead cows in the Danish Cattle Database have not included information about whether the cow died unassisted or was euthanized. METHODS We interviewed a random sample of 196 Danish dairy farmers that had reported a dead cow to the Danish Cattle Databas...