Application of international committee for animal recording (ICAR) methodology in dairy herd management in south of Russia

Abstract

This experiment was conducted to determine the advantages of introducing modern innovative approaches to dairy herd management based on the study and implementation of the methodological of International Committee for Animal Recording (ICAR). This research shows the main directions for introduction to new breeding and the technological model of interaction with breeding farms for breeding dairy cattle. This interaction occurs through the services provision for breeding farms, the control-assistant and expert-boniter services, as well as laboratories for selection control of milk quality and genetic control. The tasks of the control-assistant service included participation in the control milking of cows and individual milk samples picking from each cow and its delivery to the laboratory in a chilled form. Using as the example dairy herd of the black and white breed by studying the dynamics of somatic cells has been showing the effectiveness of different methods for assessing the quality of milk. Implementation of the milk quality regular monitoring during 1-2 months allows bringing the main parameters of milk quality in line with the requirements of national and international ICAR standards. The cow's conformation assessment by animals' linear assessment allows revealing the bull’s prepotent abilities and choosing the right strategy for improving the cow's conformation in the herd. Genetic well-being assessment of cows makes it possible to exclude unwanted individuals with genetic abnormalities and use only healthy animals in breeding. The research purpose was studying the possibility of applying the ICAR method in Russian breeding livestock to improve the dairy herd management system. The research results showed that Implementation of individual veterinary measures for two months allowed reducing the average somatic cell count by 1.85 times and reaching the level recommended by ICAR. The spread of individual indicators also significantly decreased. Therefore, Using the individual monitoring of dairy raw materials quality assessment makes it possible to study the influence of para-typical (climatic) factors on the content of dairy components, as well as to stabilize the quality parameters in terms of the level of somatic cells not higher than 200 thousand cells/cm3. Keywords: Breeding, Dairy cattle breeding, Dairy herd, Genetic resources, Milk quality.