Clinical symptoms of damage to the lateral surface of the tibia of dairy cows of different phenotype in the conditions of industrial dairy production

Abstract

The results of the influence of the conditions of keeping Ukrainian red dairy cows on the manifestation of clinical symptoms of damage to the lateral surface of the tibia and the level of reproduction are presented. The study was conducted on the basis of an industrial dairy complex (600 dairy cows with an average productivity of 6050 kg of milk per lactation) as part of agricultural associations in Odessa region. The objects of the study were cows during lactation, which were kept loose in sections with rest boxes (where the floor was a special rubber mat with a thickness of 30 mm). Evaluation (in points) was performed on the clinical manifestation of symptoms of damage to the skin epithelium of the lateral surface of the leg, which was injured by the rubber coating of the stall compared to the level of reproduction (service period, days/%) and the severity of skin pigmentation of the body surface (selection melanism). Clinical, zootechnical, biometric methods were comprehensively applied to realize the purpose of research. Comparison of data (n = 462) visual-clinical assessment of the condition of the skin of the lateral surface of the leg, as an indicator of the adaptability of lactating cows to keep in sections with rubber flooring and the area of pigmented hair of animals of different phenotypes by coat color, showed that cows typical pigmentation, characteristic of red dairy breed (red hair occupied more than 80 % of the body surface), wound lesions of the lower leg are much less common, namely: in comparison with red-spotted animals by 28.41–15.98 %, with mostly white – by 39.03–20.23 %, respectively. Due to the negative impact of open wounds of the skin of the leg on the immunity of lactating cows, it was found that increasing the number of animals with damaged epithelium as a gateway to infection, provokes an increase in the service period in cows with predominantly white or mottled color to 140.97 and 141.07 days, which is higher by 6.74 and 6.84 days, respectively, compared with red animals (P < 0.05).