The expression of oestrous behaviour in Holstein Friesian dairy cows has progressively decreased over the past 50 years. Reduced oestrus expression is one of the factors contributing to the current suboptimal reproductive efficiency in dairy farming. Variation between and within cows in the expression of oestrous behaviour is associated with variation in peripheral blood oestradiol concentratio...

Mastitis is one of the most serious and costly diseases affecting dairy cattle production. In the present study, effects of a lactoferrin gene polymorphism (intron 6) on milk somatic cell count (SCC) and subclinical mastitis was investigated in 121 Holstein dairy cattle. Two alleles of A and B and two genotypes of AA and AB were found in an EcoRI recognized single nucleotide polymorphism in int...

A longitudinal study was conducted to examine the relationship between lameness and delayed ovarian cyclicity during the first 60 d postpartum and days to first luteal activity during the first 300 d postpartum in Holstein cows. Two hundred thirty-eight cows from a 600-cow dairy that calved during a 12-mo period were used. Cows were classified into 1 of 6 categories of lameness during the first...

As ruminants are able to digest fibre efficiently and assuming that competition for feed v. food use would intensify in the future, cereals and other field crops should primarily be destined to cover the dietary needs of humans and monogastric animals such as poultry and pigs. Farming systems with a reduced or absent concentrate supplementation, as postulated by organic agriculture associations...

the study was carried out on 120 crossbred holstein × shahiwal dairy cows for a period of 150 days to quantify the influence of dietary energy and protein intake on yield and composition of milk. total 12 dairy farms having similar housing systems and holding at least 20 dairy cows in between mid to late lactation were selected for study purposes. the farms were located in the peri-urban and ur...

The objective of the present study was to determine factors affecting body condition score (BCS) and its association with productive and reproductive performances in Holstein cows. Mixed model analysis was performed on monthly records of BCS from April 2006 to July 2012 comprising 34666 records from 3134 dairy cows in a large commercial dairy herd under arid climatic conditions of Isfahan in Ir...

The objective of this study was to investigate relationships between animal personality (i.e., consistency in behavioral responses, also called temperament) and milk production in dairy cows. There has recently been a growing research interest in animal personality, which in production animals can have an important impact on welfare and production potential. Despite this, the relationship betwe...

this experiment was conducted to evaluate reproductive indices and provide appropriate solutions to improve the reproductive efficiency of dairy cattle in kermanshah province. with reference to forty-eight dairy industrial herds available at different cities of the province, a questionnaire containing quantitative measures were completed to assessing the reproductive parameters of 5397 dairy co...

Careful antemortem examination and interpretation of findings, assisted by good clinical records, do much to throw light on the nature of vertical fissure in cattle. During an eight month period of investigation, 13 (3.2%) lame cows with vertical fissure out of 52 Holstein cows with different claw fissures were selected for clinical and gross pathological purposes in a commercial dairy farm wit...

in order to examine the effect of using rumen protected methionine (mepron, evonik industries, hanau, germany) on productive and reproductive performance under field condition, 195 holstein cows were used in a unbalanced completely randomized design and 2 groups. experimental treatments consisted of: 1) control group with 110 holstein dairy cows (71±51 dim and 47.5±12 milk yield) and without me...