The fourth through sixth parity of 5- to 10-yr-old cows were used to evaluate trade-offs involved with sires of large mature size vs medium mature size in a terminal sire crossbreeding program and to characterize five breeds and their crosses for their potential as dam lines. Charolais and Red Poll bulls, representing large (L) and medium (M) mature size, respectively, were mated to cows repres...

Effects of neonatal vaccination on antigen-specific cellular and humoral immune responses of dairy calves have not been well described. The purpose of this study was to characterize the ontogeny of the adaptive immune response in calves sensitized to the attenuated strain of Mycobacterium bovis, bacillus Calmette-Guerín. Holstein bull calves were nonvaccinated (n = 6, vaccination controls) or v...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of nutritional plane on health and performance of dairy calves after infection with Cryptosporidium parvum. DESIGN Randomized, controlled trial. ANIMALS 20 Holstein bull calves. PROCEDURES Calves were assigned to a higher plane of nutrition (HPN; 0.30 Mcal intake energy/kg of metabolic body weight using a 28% protein-20% fat milk replacer) or conventional ...

Belgian Blue (BB) cattle are very sensitive to mange caused by Psoroptes ovis and, in contrast to the case in Holstein cattle, single treatments with ivermectin do not result in complete elimination of the parasite. The objective of the present study was to determine the concentration of ivermectin in plasma, skin and hair following subcutaneous administration to Holstein and BB calves and to a...

Intake and annual performance of Limousin × Holstein-Friesian and Simmental × Holstein-Friesian beef suckler cows, and pre-weaning growth of their calves Beef cross dairy heifers remain a significant source of replacement breeding stock for the suckler herd in Ireland. Previous studies at this centre have compared Hereford × Friesian beef suckler dams with Charolais × Friesian and Limousin × Fr...

The relationship between milk intake and live-weight gain of the very young calf, when usually its sole diet is whole milk, has not been studied in the past in detail. It is clear from our earlier experiments that, when calves are removed from their dams at birth, given not more than 6 pt. of colostrum and then bucket-fed, the growth curve during the first 3 weeks of life tends to be slightly c...

Weaning of dairy calves is an early life husbandry management practice which involves the changeover from a liquid to a solid feed based diet. The objectives of the study were to use RNA-seq technology to examine the effect of (i) breed and (ii) gradual weaning, on the whole blood mRNA transcriptome of artificially reared Holstein-Friesian and Jersey calves. The calves were gradually weaned ove...