Whether to select for longer life in the herd or shorter calving interval depends on the genetic and phenotypic relationships among herd life, amount of milk in first lactation, and calving interval. Herd life and average calving intmwal are essentially phenotypically uncorrelated. The phenotypic and genetic correlations of herd life and milk in first lactation ranged from .19 to .25 and from ....

BACKGROUND Body condition score and blood profiles have been used to monitor management and herd health in dairy cows. The aim of this study was to examine BCS and extended metabolic profiles, reflecting both energy metabolism and liver status around calving in high-producing herds with a high incidence of abomasal displacement and ketosis and to evaluate if such profiles can be used at herd le...

A monoclonal antibody-based blocking enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used for serological surveillance of Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae infection in pig herds. A follow-up study was conducted on "herd predictive values" previously reported for this ELISA. Of those herds giving positive results by this ELISA, 42% were subsequently found to be infected, while 100% of herds giving negativ...

The term "Production Diseases" referred traditionally to those diseases induced by management practices, metabolic diseases are typical examples. Recently, the term "Production related diseases" has been enhanced to include other traits, such as infertility, and diseases such as mastitis and lameness that might involve infectious agents but exacerbated by nutritional or managemental factors. Th...

The relationship between bulk tank somatic cell count (SCC) and farm management and infrastructure was examined using data from 398 randomly selected, yet representative, Irish dairy farms where the basal diet is grazed grass. Median bulk tank SCC for the farms was 282,887 cells/ml ranging from 82,209 to 773,028 cells/ml. Two questionnaires were administered through face-to-face contact with ea...

The bulk milk enzyme-linked immune sorbent assay (ELISA) is a rapid and inexpensive method of assessing herd exposure to pathogens that is increasingly being used for the diagnosis of parasite infections in dairy herds. In this paper, with the dairy herd health veterinarian in mind, we review the principles of the assay and the recent literature on the potential role of bulk milk ELISA for the ...

Enzootic bovine leukosis is a contagious disease of cattle caused by the retrovirus, bovine leukemia virus (BLV) and is the most common cause of malignant neoplasm in cattle. In order to facilitate surveillance of this disease in dairy herds, we developed a method to combine ELISA of milk collected during routine production testing with a prescribed sampling of cows that is independent of the p...

A comparative study of the indirect haemagglutination (IHA), immunofluorescence (IFAT) and immunoenzymatic (ELISA) tests was carried out to determine the prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii antibodies in goats. One hundred seventy-four serum samples were obtained from four goat herds from the region of Uberlândia, State of Minas Gerais. The distribution of the animals, according to their origin, wa...

On the field, bovine practitioners must often take decisions promptly, not only about individual sick animals but also more and more on a herd basis. Fortunately, they can rely on a subtle clinical experience to fix the prognosis and diagnosis before possibly treating diseased animals. They can also use different clinical scoring systems to evaluate feeding efficiency, locomotion and reproducti...