Assessment of biosecurity status in dairy cow farms

Abstract

BackgroundBiosecurity plays an irreplaceable role in preventing diseases, increasing productivity of dairy herd and welfare on the farm, prevention of drug resistance and public health safety. Assessment of biosecurity measures were carried out both by observations and questionnaires from December 2019 to April 2020 in dairy cows’ farms. In addition to assessment of biosecurity, the present study also intended to identify factor associated to biosecurity and its specific component implementation.ResultsOut of 125 biosecurity practices considered to evaluate the overall biosecurity status of dairy farms, the scores ranged from 34 to 75. The overall percentage of the biosecurity score varied from 27.2 to 60%. Out of 20 dairy farms included in the present study, nine farms gained a percentage score of greater than or equal to 50% (ranging from 50.4 to 60%), thus their biosecurity status was evaluated as “Good”. The remaining 11 farms attained a percentage score lower than 50% (varying from 27.2 to 46.4%) and therefore graded as “Poor”. In this study biosecurity categorized in to four components: traffic control (21.5 ± 4.3), isolation (14.45 ± 2.2), sanitation (16.65 ± 6.83) and health management (3.25 ± 1.07) with their respective mean ± standard deviation of each component. Out of four biosecurity components: isolation and traffic control were implemented better, but sanitation and animal health management were poorly implemented. Fisher’s exact test analysis of the obtained results showed that among all factors assumed to affect biosecurity adoption, however only a significant association (P < 0.05) between biosecurity status and location of farms was appreciated.ConclusionsIn conclusion, the overall adoption of biosecurity measures in the dairy farms was evaluated to be poor. Thus, raising awareness of herd owners, facilitating dairy husbandry training by the concerned body, pushing herd owners to develop a biosecurity plan and practicing it. And, especially improvement of sanitation and animal health management systems should be prioritized by policy makers or the concerned organizations.