Poor bovine neonatal survival rates are an international animal welfare issue. The key modifiable risk factors associated with such loss are age at first calving in primiparae, calf breed, gender and gestation length and calving management. The primary causes of mortality in the perinatal period are calving problems, in particular dystocia, defined as both difficult and abnormal calvings. Calf ...

Weights and individual feed consumptions of 160 beef, dairy and beef • dairy darns and their progeny were used to estimate several measures of life cycle cow efficiency. Efficiency was expressed as the ratio of ou tput to input, where output included relative values for slaughter weights, carcass weights and t r immed wholesale cut weights of progeny and weight of the dam, and inputs were prean...

 Take Home Messages  The most dramatic physiological changes occur during birth and death.  Calves born without assistance experience hypoxia (low arterial blood oxygen), acidosis, and frequently hypothermia. Dystocia calves experience the same changes but to a greater degree.  Dystocia has an immediate and prolonged effect on the health and productivity of calves.  Perinatal mortality due...

A total number of 1243 records of calving cases of 585 dairy Friesian cows during 8 consecutive years from 1997 to 2004 collected from Sakha Animal Production Research Station belonging to Animal Production Research Institute, Agriculture Research Center were used to study the effect of sire, live body weight (LBW) and age of dam and calving season on twinning rate and its consequent effects on...

The present study was conducted in the Valsad district of Southern Gujarat. Total 240 respondents were interviewed for questionnaire prepared about improved dairy husbandry practices adopted by them. findings indicated that majority farmers had medium adoption level on different component viz. 67.92% housing, 64.58% feeding, 63.34% breeding, 70% healthcare, milking management and calf rearing. ...

Respiratory disease and diarrhea are the 2 most common diseases that result in the use of antimicrobial drugs in preweaned calves. Because the use of drugs in food animals, including dairy calves, has the potential for generating cross-resistance to drugs used in human medicine, it is vital to propose farm practices that foster the judicious use of antimicrobials while assuring animal health an...

T HE reproductive performance and milk production of beef females is closely associated with nutritional status. Swanson and Hinton (1964) found that dairy heifers reared on a subnormal feeding regimen produced less milk than their twins which were fed normally. Blakely (1964) and Wiltbank, Bond and Warwick (1965) have associated anestrus and delay in puberty with a low plane of nutrition. Buch...

Calving records from the Animal Breeding Center of Iran collected from January 1993 to December 2007 and comprising 1 163 594 Holstein calving events from 2 552 herds were used to evaluate reported perinatal calf mortality, 305-d milk yield, 305-d fat yield of milk and 305-d fat percentage of milk in singleand twin-births. A logistic regression model was constructed to analyze calf mortality be...

To harmonize good production practices (GPP) for dairy producers in Canada, the Canadian dairy industry has developed and is implementing a program called Canadian Quality Milk (CQM). A postal questionnaire was administered to all Canadian dairy producers enrolled in dairy herd-improvement organizations in 2008 (n=10,474) to investigate their attitudes towards the program and to establish basel...

The Journal of Dairy Science has increasingly become a primary outlet for scientific research concerning the health of the dairy cow and her calf. This paper attempts to highlight Journal of Dairy Science articles that have linked nutrition and nutritional strategies to reduce disease incidence on the dairy farm. Disorders associated with an animal's inability to cope with the demands of high p...