Dairy cow mortality causes financial loss and is increasing over time; it indicates suboptimal herd health or welfare. To describe the herd-level and contextual factors affecting cow mortality, the French National Bovine Dataset Identification was used to create dairy, beef, or fattening units within farms, for 2005 and 2006. Mortality rate (MO-RA, outcome variable) and most variables were calc...

An extended version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was applied by means of Structural Equation Modelling to testing various hypotheses on attitudes and intentions of dairy farmers towards three novel sustainable production strategies, as well as the influence of organic practices and collaborative behaviours, such as information sharing with supply-chain partners. Data on the acceptan...

All food production systems have an impact upon the environment, regardless of how and where the food is produced. The effects that agricultural practices have upon environmental parameters are increasingly well-known, not only to the global and national industries, but also to policy-makers and consumers. Increased public awareness of these issues underlines the critical need to adopt dairy pr...

The competition among dairy producers is sharp nowadays. In this challenging situation the dairies are able to survive by the continuous increase in the efficiency and thereby the profitability of their production. The level of animal health is a basic influential factor of the profitableness on dairy farms, thus, it is very helpful to reveal the herd diseases resulting in the largest economic ...

Dairy cattle reared in western Kenya are exposed to medium to high levels of trypanosomosis risk. The social background, farm characteristics and dairy cattle productivity of 90 and 30 randomly selected farmers from medium- and high-risk trypanosomosis areas, respectively, were compared. All the 120 farmers were visited between July and August 2002. Data analysis was performed using descriptive...

In recent decades, urban encroachment and increasing environmental regulation have impacted California’s dairy industry. A complicated set of environmental legislation affects dairies in the state, and can differ depending on location, creating the possibility for within-state pollution havens. This article details the regional, state, and federal environmental regulation of California’s dairy ...

Longevity as defined by the Random House Dictionary is “the duration of an individual’s life”. Currently dairy cows average 2.8 calvings in a ‘lifetime (Cassell, 2005). Raising high quality heifers that will express their genetic potential for milk production and allow optimal duration in the milking herd (longevity) is a priority objective to balance the investment of 15-20% of total costs of ...

The objective of this study was to determine effect of dietary essential oil (EO) compounds, which contained cinnamaldehyde, eugenol, peppermint, coriander, cumin, lemongrass, and an organic carrier on feed intake, milk composition, and rumen fermentation of dairy cows during heat exposure. Thirty-two Holstein cows (days in milk= 60 ± 5) were assigned to one of two treatment groups: a Control a...

In this study dairy sludge was evaluated as an alternative cultivation medium for Rhizobium. Growth of bacterial strains at different concentrations of Dairy sludge was monitored. Maximum growth of all strains was observed at 60% Dairy sludge concentration. At 60% optical density (OD) values are 0.804 for Rhizobium trifolii (MTCC905), 0.825 for Rhizobium trifolii (MTCC906), and 0.793 for Rhizob...

In a national survey of US dairy operations, 1685 dairy operations reported 47,057 new dairy heifers (either births or acquisitions) and 4427 deaths (9.4%) of preweaned dairy heifer calves over a 3 month period. Stepwise logistic regression was used to identify management practices associated with high mortality among preweaned heifers in dairy operations where at least three dairy heifer calve...