The establishment and maintenance of pregnancy in lactating dairy cows is a complex biological event that is influenced by a multitude of factors, from the reproductive biology of the cow to managerial aspects of the dairy farm. It is often mentioned in the scientific literature that fertility in dairy cows has declined concurrent with major advances in milk production. Some of this decline is ...

Increasing levels of dairy cow mortality pose a challenge to the US dairy industry. The industry's current understanding of dairy cow mortality is reliant upon descriptions largely based on producer or veterinary assumptions regarding cause of death without the benefit of detailed postmortem evaluations. A thorough necropsy is a superior tool for establishing a cause of death, except for cases ...

Dairy cow systems based on grassland utilization are characterized by a variation of harvested forage quality from 1 year to another and a fluctuation of grass availability and quality during the pasture season. Consequently, the energy supplied by the diet – i.e., concentrates plus hay or silage in winter and grazing in summer, may not always match animal requirements. A modelling approach ena...

To avoid nutrient limitations, MP requirements are often overestimated in the formulation of dairy cow rations. Overfeeding of N results in increased expenses for producers and increased N excretion to the environment. Thus, improvements in the efficiency of dairy cow feeding provide economic and environmental incentives. Previous improvements in feed efficiency have come via the dilution of ma...

background: ovarian cysts are among the diseases which cause reproductive failure and economic losses in dairy herds. high yelding dairy cattles are suseptable to reproductive failure caused by ovarian cysts, as a result of their exposure to stressful coditions during lactation. objectives: this study aimed to monitor metabolic profile tests in dairy cows with ovarian cysts in comparison with c...

Introduction It is now widely recognised that reduced fertility in dairy herds is one of the most important factors affecting producer profitability. Roche (2006) has defined the effect of infertility on profitability as: (i) prolonged calving interval with fewer calves and less milk per cow; (ii) increased replacement costs; (iii) increased labour, semen and veterinary bills; and (iv) an exten...

This paper examines the cost efficiency of dairy farms in 2 important regions of commercial milk production in Poland (i.e., Wielkopolskie and Podlaskie). Both regions gained importance following the market-driven resource allocation mechanism adopted after Poland's transition to the market economy in 1989 and accession to the European Union (EU) in 2004. The elimination of the dairy quota syst...

The transition from pregnant, non-lactating to non-pregnant, lactating is too often a disastrous experience for the cow. Most of the metabolic diseases of dairy cows milk fever, ketosis, retained placenta, and displacement of the abomasum occur within the first 2 wk of lactation. In addition to metabolic disease, the majority of infectious disease experienced by the dairy cow, especially mastit...

Data from the same 138 New York dairy farms for the years 1994 through 1997 were used to estimate whether Bovine Somatotropin (bST) generated profits for adopters. Data from these same farms from 1993 were used to sort farms into groups by production per cow, profit per cow, and farm size, in order to test bST response by these delineators. Statistically, farms that used bST on average experien...

Introduction Investigating and comparing the two systems Comparing some technical efficiency ratios and profit Points to note about the comparison Conclusions References Abstract. In this study, budgets of herd dynamics, feed and energy supply, production and profit of alternative dairy farm systems were used to examine the effects of changing a 230 cow Holstein-Friesian (HF) dairy system to a ...