Abstract
An experiment was conducted to assess characterization of cow-related health disorders affecting the culling in Torbat-e Jam dairy farms. In total, the data of 5874 lactating cows have been used in this study (1997 to 2017). The logistic regression was applied to investigate the associations between the response variable, the risk of culling, and predictor variables including the parity, calving ease, birth type, calving season, and age at the first calving. The risk of culling increased with parity and twinning (P< 0.001). The odds ratio (OR) of a cow leaving the herd were 1, 1.17, 1.35, 2.06, 2.95 and 3.55 for parities 1 to 6, respectively, 1 and 1.14 for twinning. The OR increased with increasing in calving difficulty score (P< 0.001). The OR were 1, 1.21, 1.26 and 2.30 for calving difficulty score 1 to 4, respectively. Calving in hot season increased the risk of culling (P< 0.001). The OR were 1, 1.59, 1.46 and 1.06 for spring, summer, fall and winter respectively. Cows that calved first at about 24 months of age had a lower risk of culling (P< 0.001). These findings help farmers reduce their involuntary culling rates in dairy herds by improving the management of dairy cows in Torbat-e Jam.
Highlights
The health and proper conditions for breeding livestock are very important issues due to focus of consumers on the livestock products quality and safety, in recent years
These results are similar to the findings of Bahrampour et al (2016) who observed an increase in risk of culling with odd ratio 1.00, 1.32, 1.55. 1.62, 1.67 and 1.88 when parity increased from 1 to 6 or more
Some previous studies demonstrated that twining, increase calving difficulty score and mortality level by 7% compared to cow with singleton birth (Shahid et al, 2015; Atashi et al, 2012)
Summary
The health and proper conditions for breeding livestock are very important issues due to focus of consumers on the livestock products quality and safety, in recent years. Further knowledge about herd health status and cow-related characteristics may lead to development of programs for better animal welfare, reducing of involuntary culling and increase quality and safety production in Iranian dairy farms. This experiment was carried out to identify characterization of factors affecting animal health and culling rate in Torbat-e Jam dairy farms, one of the biggest dairy producing regions in Iran, Khorasan Razavi Province
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