Abstract
This study was conducted to determine the effect of sire of dam, parity, dam body condition score (BCS) and sex of calf on birth weight (BWT), gestation length (GL) and milk yield (MY) of Friesian x Bunaji dairy cows. Results showed that sire had significant (P<0.05) effect on gestation length (GL), birth weight (BWT) and milk yield (MY) of dam. However, parity of dam had no significant (P>0.05) effect on GL and BWT of calves, but had significant (P<0.05) effect on MY with a trend that showed an increase in milk yield with parity until the maximum yield was attained at 4 parity and declined thereafter. The dams body condition score (BCS) had significant effect on GL, BWT and MY. Dams with higher BCS (>3.5) had longer GL (280.27days) and higher BWT (30.50kg), while those with moderate BCS (ranged 2.5-3.5) had higher MY(1995.25kg) and moderate BWT (26.33kg). Findings in this study showed that the maximum parity in which optimum performance of this crosses could be attain is the 4th parity. beyond which the production capacity may declined. Also, the dam BCS required for optimum BWT and MY is between 2.5 and 3.5 point.
Published Version
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