Milk quality parameters were recorded for United States dairy farms utilizing automatic milking (AM) from August 2000 to June 2003. Additional farms were admitted to the study as they began operation, so that the full data set includes 12 AM farms. Somatic cell count (SCC) and total bacterial count (TBC) data was analyzed and compared to corresponding data from a cohort of conventional farms in...

Infectious salmon anaemia (ISA) is an important infectious disease in Atlantic salmon farming causing recurrent epidemic outbreaks worldwide. The focus of this paper is on tracing the spread of ISA among Norwegian salmon farms. To trace transmission pathways for the ISA virus (ISAV), we use phylogenetic relationships between virus isolates in combination with space-time data on disease occurren...

Efficiency analysis is used for assessing links between technical efficiency (TE) of livestock farms and animal diseases. However, previous studies often do not make the link with the allocation of inputs and mainly present average effects that ignore the often huge differences among farms. In this paper, we studied the relationship between exposure to gastrointestinal (GI) nematode infections,...

The prevalence, distribution, and antimicrobial susceptibility of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in Belgian pig farms has been investigated. To that end, nasal samples were collected from 1,500 pigs on 50 farms randomly selected over Belgium. Both closed (breeding or farrow-to-finish) and open (fattening) farms were included. Within closed farms different age groups were inv...

The aim of this research is to characterise the wild rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) commercial game farms in Spain using variables related to structure, management and marketing. To this end, a structured survey was administered in 2009 to 21 privately-owned farms. This subsector was an average age of 13. The average size of the breeding stock of the farms was 431 does and 64 bucks. Eighty-five...

The purpose of this research was socioeconomicanalysis of farms using primary data in two villages of Mymensingh Sadar. A total of 60 farms including 20 small, 20 medium and 20 large were randomly selected for the study. Socioeconomic analysis showed that indebtedness was higher in large farms than those of small and medium ones. Large farms also engaged more in farm activities than others. All...

OBJECTIVE We evaluated the epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance in enterococci from animal farms and the potential relation of resistance to antimicrobial use. METHODS Enterococci from faecal samples from 18 beef cattle, 18 dairy cattle, 18 swine, 13 chicken, and eight turkey farms were prospectively evaluated over a 6 year period from 1998 to 2003. RESULTS We evaluated 1256 isolates of...

The behavior of groups of housed, lactating dairy cattle was observed over 2 winter housing periods on 20 organic farms and 20 conventional farms in the United Kingdom. Three methods were used: (1) 6 video-clips of 10 min duration were captured of cows feeding at sections of the feed-bunk face during the peak feeding period (0 to 90 min) and continuously observed for aggressive interactions amo...

Early postpartum (6 weeks) ovarian activity, hormonal profiles, uterine involution, uterine infections, serum electrolytes, glucose, milk acetoacetate and blood urea nitrogen (BUN) levels were studied in 2 Estonian high producing dairy herd with annual milk production of 7688 (Farm A) and 9425 (Farm B). From each farm 10 cows, with normal calving performance were used. Blood samples for the hor...

While some research finds that environmental regulation of hog production reduces output by small farms, other work finds that large farms downsize to avoid regulation. None consider the potential size-bias of regulation. We show theoretically that when size-based regulations are also size-biased, large farms downsize, expand, or do neither depending on how regulations shift their marginal prod...