Major Reproductive Health Problems of Dairy Cows at Horro Guduru Animal Breeding and Research Center, Horro Guduru Wollega Zone, Ethiopia

Abstract

Questionnaire survey together with longitudinal study (regular follow-up) were conducted from November, 2011 up to April, 2012 on major reproductive health problems of Horro and Horro-Jersey cross bred cows in and around Wollega University Horro Guduru Animal Breeding and Research Center. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of major reproductive health problems in Horro Guduru Animal Breeding and Research Center. From 402 (303 local and 99 cross breeds) assessed, employing questionnaire survey (n=261) and regular follow-up (n=141); 39.5% (n=159) had at least one of the major reproductive health problems. The reproductive health problems according to their relative importance at the study site were; retained fetal membrane, dystocia, metritis, abortion, milkfever, pyometre, repeat breeder, uterine and vaginal prolapse with their respective prevalence rate of 10.0%, 9.2%, 7.0%, 4.42%, 3.73%, 2%, 1.24%, 1.7% and 0.5%. This particular study indicated that clinical reproductive problems, which include retained fetal membrane, dystocia, metritis and abortion, were found to be the three most prevalent reproductive problems in the center. And from the risk factors, it is found out that as age increases almost the prevalence of all the three most important reproduction problems shown to decrease. Specifically there was a significant association between age of 3 - 5 years cow (p 0.05) association between prevalence rate of reproductive problems and the parity of the individual dairy cow. The reproductive problems were also assessed in relation to body condition score of the cows and the associations were found to be statistically not significant (P > 0.05). However, factors like hygiene practice at and around calving (HAC), was found to have an association with the occurrence of retained fetal membrane(P < 0.05) and statistical association indicates the presence of less exposure for retained fetal membrane for animals kept at good hygienic status (OR=8, CI (0.2, 0.76). This particular study showed that; clinical reproductive health problems, which include retained fetal membrane, dystocia and metritis, were one of the major reproductive problems responsible for the low reproductive performance of Wollega University Horro Guduru Animal Breeding and Research Center and its surrounding dairy cows, Horro Guduru Wollega, West of Ethiopia.