The objective of this study was to determine whether dairy farms with poor cow welfare could be identified using a national database for bovine identification and registration that monitors cattle deaths and movements. The welfare of dairy cattle was assessed using the Welfare Quality(®) protocol (WQ) on 24 Portuguese dairy farms and on 1930 animals. Five farms were classified as having poor we...

AIM The objective of this study was to optimize dry period (DP) length that can maximize the production across adjacent lactations and overall lifetime yield. MATERIALS AND METHODS Performance records with respect to DP spread over a period of 15-year in Karan Fries (KF) cattle maintained at Livestock Research Centre (National Dairy Research Institute), were collected for the study. Data of 6...

To describe proportion and pattern of culling in commercial dairy herds of Khorasan Razavi Province, this survey was carried out from 21st March 2008 to 20th March 2009 in 15 industrialized dairy herds. For each culled cow data related to parity at culling, last calving to culling interval and primary reason for culling were recorded. Annual herd exit rate was 20.9%. Out of a total of 652 culle...

Sample day records of means of somatic cell scores were analyzed to develop adjustments to standardize records for length of lactation. Estimates for effect of DIM were from a model that included random lactation and cow effects for lactations to date of 753,929 Holsteins and 21,842 Jerseys calving in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin from 1987 to 1991. Lactation, cow, and residual variances were estim...

Feeding dairy beef, predominantly Holstein steers, has evolved into a highly specialized segment of the US beef industry. Producing acceptable-quality carcasses from dairy steers requires feeding high-energy diets and marketing them at a young age, 12 to 14 months, and weighing 1150 to 1300 lbs. Several aspects of the dairy beef program are unique compared with beef cattle. The calves are not r...

The aim of study was evaluation of the quality of feeds for dairy cattle on the content of copper and zinc from two agro-ecological zones (western Slovakia and eastern Slovakia). Feed samples-corn silage (n=70), lucerne silage (n=32), grass silage (n=25), and total mixed ration for dairy cows-TMR (n=66) came from livestock farms. The Cu and Zn contents were assessed in samples using atomic abso...

In Switzerland, infertility is the main reason for involuntary culling of dairy cows. According to several studies, 25 to 35 % of dairy cows are culled because of reproductive problems (Rust, 2001; Aeberhard et al., 1997; Stärk et al., 1997). Failure to conceive, absent or unobservable cyclicity and embryonic loss are the most important culling reasons within the “reproductive problems”-complex...

The objective of the present study was to estimate genetic trends for lactation milk yield, persistency of milk yield, somatic cell count and interval between first and second calving in Holstein dairy cows of Iran. The dataset consisted of 210,625 test day and 25,883 first parity cows with milk yield recorded from July 2002 to September 2007 comprising 97 herds in Iran. Breeding values of anim...

The study aimed to determine the effect of different fixed factors (breed, region, calving year, season, parity and lactation stage) on daily milk production (yield content) four dairy cattle breeds under heat stress conditions (THI?72). research was conducted a set test-day records (Simmental, Holstein-Friesian, Red Holstein Brown Swiss) reared in Republic Serbia (Region Ma?va, Podunavlje Šuma...