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Benchmarking calf health: Assessment tools for dairy herd health consultancy based on reference values from 730 German dairies with respect to seasonal, farm type, and herd size effects

Good calf health is crucial for a successfully operating farm business and animal welfare on dairy farms. To evaluate calf health on farms and to identify potential problem areas, benchmarking tools can be used by farmers, herd managers, veterinarians, and other advisory persons in the field. Howeve...

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Autores principales: Dachrodt, Linda, Bartel, Alexander, Arndt, Heidi, Kellermann, Laura Maria, Stock, Annegret, Volkmann, Maria, Boeker, Andreas Robert, Birnstiel, Katrin, Do Duc, Phuong, Klawitter, Marcus, Paul, Philip, Stoll, Alexander, Woudstra, Svenja, Knubben-Schweizer, Gabriela, Müller, Kerstin Elisabeth, Hoedemaker, Martina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9539667/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36213417
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.990798
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author Dachrodt, Linda
Bartel, Alexander
Arndt, Heidi
Kellermann, Laura Maria
Stock, Annegret
Volkmann, Maria
Boeker, Andreas Robert
Birnstiel, Katrin
Do Duc, Phuong
Klawitter, Marcus
Paul, Philip
Stoll, Alexander
Woudstra, Svenja
Knubben-Schweizer, Gabriela
Müller, Kerstin Elisabeth
Hoedemaker, Martina
author_facet Dachrodt, Linda
Bartel, Alexander
Arndt, Heidi
Kellermann, Laura Maria
Stock, Annegret
Volkmann, Maria
Boeker, Andreas Robert
Birnstiel, Katrin
Do Duc, Phuong
Klawitter, Marcus
Paul, Philip
Stoll, Alexander
Woudstra, Svenja
Knubben-Schweizer, Gabriela
Müller, Kerstin Elisabeth
Hoedemaker, Martina
author_sort Dachrodt, Linda
collection PubMed
description Good calf health is crucial for a successfully operating farm business and animal welfare on dairy farms. To evaluate calf health on farms and to identify potential problem areas, benchmarking tools can be used by farmers, herd managers, veterinarians, and other advisory persons in the field. However, for calves, benchmarking tools are not yet widely established in practice. This study provides hands-on application for on-farm benchmarking of calf health. Reference values were generated from a large dataset of the “PraeRi” study, including 730 dairy farms with a total of 13,658 examined preweaned dairy calves. At herd level, omphalitis (O, median 15.9%) was the most common disorder, followed by diarrhea (D, 15.4%) and respiratory disease (RD, 2.9%). Abnormal weight bearing (AWB) was rarely detected (median, 0.0%). Calves with symptoms of more than one disorder at the same time (multimorbidity, M) were observed with a prevalence of 2.3%. The enrolled farms varied in herd size, farm operating systems, and management practices and thus represented a wide diversity in dairy farming, enabling a comparison with similar managed farms in Germany and beyond. To ensure comparability of the data in practice, the reference values were calculated for the whole data set, clustered according to farm size (1–40 dairy cows (n = 130), 41–60 dairy cows (n = 99), 61–120 dairy cows (n = 180), 121–240 dairy cows (n = 119) and farms with more than 240 dairy cows (n = 138), farm operating systems (conventional (n = 666), organic (n = 64)) and month of the year of the farm visit. There was a slight tendency for smaller farms to have a lower prevalence of disorders. A statistically significant herd-size effect was detected for RD (p = 0.008) and D (p < 0.001). For practical application of these reference values, tables, diagrams, and an Excel(®) (Microsoft(®)) based calf health calculator were developed as tools for on-farm benchmarking (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.6172753). In addition, this study provides a detailed description of the colostrum, feeding and housing management of preweaned calves in German dairy farms of different herd sizes and farm type (e.g., conventional and organic).
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spelling pubmed-95396672022-10-08 Benchmarking calf health: Assessment tools for dairy herd health consultancy based on reference values from 730 German dairies with respect to seasonal, farm type, and herd size effects Dachrodt, Linda Bartel, Alexander Arndt, Heidi Kellermann, Laura Maria Stock, Annegret Volkmann, Maria Boeker, Andreas Robert Birnstiel, Katrin Do Duc, Phuong Klawitter, Marcus Paul, Philip Stoll, Alexander Woudstra, Svenja Knubben-Schweizer, Gabriela Müller, Kerstin Elisabeth Hoedemaker, Martina Front Vet Sci Veterinary Science Good calf health is crucial for a successfully operating farm business and animal welfare on dairy farms. To evaluate calf health on farms and to identify potential problem areas, benchmarking tools can be used by farmers, herd managers, veterinarians, and other advisory persons in the field. However, for calves, benchmarking tools are not yet widely established in practice. This study provides hands-on application for on-farm benchmarking of calf health. Reference values were generated from a large dataset of the “PraeRi” study, including 730 dairy farms with a total of 13,658 examined preweaned dairy calves. At herd level, omphalitis (O, median 15.9%) was the most common disorder, followed by diarrhea (D, 15.4%) and respiratory disease (RD, 2.9%). Abnormal weight bearing (AWB) was rarely detected (median, 0.0%). Calves with symptoms of more than one disorder at the same time (multimorbidity, M) were observed with a prevalence of 2.3%. The enrolled farms varied in herd size, farm operating systems, and management practices and thus represented a wide diversity in dairy farming, enabling a comparison with similar managed farms in Germany and beyond. To ensure comparability of the data in practice, the reference values were calculated for the whole data set, clustered according to farm size (1–40 dairy cows (n = 130), 41–60 dairy cows (n = 99), 61–120 dairy cows (n = 180), 121–240 dairy cows (n = 119) and farms with more than 240 dairy cows (n = 138), farm operating systems (conventional (n = 666), organic (n = 64)) and month of the year of the farm visit. There was a slight tendency for smaller farms to have a lower prevalence of disorders. A statistically significant herd-size effect was detected for RD (p = 0.008) and D (p < 0.001). For practical application of these reference values, tables, diagrams, and an Excel(®) (Microsoft(®)) based calf health calculator were developed as tools for on-farm benchmarking (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.6172753). In addition, this study provides a detailed description of the colostrum, feeding and housing management of preweaned calves in German dairy farms of different herd sizes and farm type (e.g., conventional and organic). Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-09-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9539667/ /pubmed/36213417 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.990798 Text en Copyright © 2022 Dachrodt, Bartel, Arndt, Kellermann, Stock, Volkmann, Boeker, Birnstiel, Do Duc, Klawitter, Paul, Stoll, Woudstra, Knubben-Schweizer, Müller and Hoedemaker. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Veterinary Science
Dachrodt, Linda
Bartel, Alexander
Arndt, Heidi
Kellermann, Laura Maria
Stock, Annegret
Volkmann, Maria
Boeker, Andreas Robert
Birnstiel, Katrin
Do Duc, Phuong
Klawitter, Marcus
Paul, Philip
Stoll, Alexander
Woudstra, Svenja
Knubben-Schweizer, Gabriela
Müller, Kerstin Elisabeth
Hoedemaker, Martina
Benchmarking calf health: Assessment tools for dairy herd health consultancy based on reference values from 730 German dairies with respect to seasonal, farm type, and herd size effects
title Benchmarking calf health: Assessment tools for dairy herd health consultancy based on reference values from 730 German dairies with respect to seasonal, farm type, and herd size effects
title_full Benchmarking calf health: Assessment tools for dairy herd health consultancy based on reference values from 730 German dairies with respect to seasonal, farm type, and herd size effects
title_fullStr Benchmarking calf health: Assessment tools for dairy herd health consultancy based on reference values from 730 German dairies with respect to seasonal, farm type, and herd size effects
title_full_unstemmed Benchmarking calf health: Assessment tools for dairy herd health consultancy based on reference values from 730 German dairies with respect to seasonal, farm type, and herd size effects
title_short Benchmarking calf health: Assessment tools for dairy herd health consultancy based on reference values from 730 German dairies with respect to seasonal, farm type, and herd size effects
title_sort benchmarking calf health: assessment tools for dairy herd health consultancy based on reference values from 730 german dairies with respect to seasonal, farm type, and herd size effects
topic Veterinary Science
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9539667/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36213417
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.990798
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