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The association of herd performance indicators with dairy cow longevity: An empirical study

The associations between reproductive performance, milk yield and health status with the risk of culling, and thus with a cow’s longevity, have been well documented at the individual cow level. Associations at individual cow level may, however, not be valid at herd level due to interrelated herd man...

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Autores principales: Han, Ruozhu, Mourits, Monique, Steeneveld, Wilma, Hogeveen, Henk
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9794065/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36574397
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278204
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author Han, Ruozhu
Mourits, Monique
Steeneveld, Wilma
Hogeveen, Henk
author_facet Han, Ruozhu
Mourits, Monique
Steeneveld, Wilma
Hogeveen, Henk
author_sort Han, Ruozhu
collection PubMed
description The associations between reproductive performance, milk yield and health status with the risk of culling, and thus with a cow’s longevity, have been well documented at the individual cow level. Associations at individual cow level may, however, not be valid at herd level due to interrelated herd management aspects and/or policy restrictions. The objective of this study was to explore the association of herd performance indicators with herd-level dairy cow longevity under Dutch production conditions. Longevity was expressed by three different measures, viz. age at culling, lifetime milk production of culled cows and culling rate. The evaluated herd performance indicators included factors on milk production, youngstock rearing, reproduction and health performance as registered on 10 719 Dutch commercial dairy herds during the period 2007–2016. Averaged over herds and the evaluated period, the age of culled milking cows was 2 139 days (5.8 years, SD±298 days), the lifetime milk production of culled cows was 31 238 kg (SD±7,494 kg), and the culling rate was 0.24 (SD±0.08). A mixed linear regression modelling approach was applied to evaluate the association of each of the three longevity measures with the selected herd performance indicators. The results indicated that only four herd performance indictors (herd size, herd expansion, heifer ratio and the proportion of cows with potential subclinical ketosis) shared significant associations with all three longevity variables. Generally, the strength of the associations between each of the evaluated longevity measures and herd performance indicators was only limited. The absence of strong associations between the longevity measures and herd performance indicators reveal that there is potential of extending cattle longevity without affecting the herd performance in terms of milk production, reproduction and health. Moreover, only part of the observed variance in longevity among the herds over time was explained by the herd performance variables, indicating that differences in longevity at herd level may predominantly be determined by other factors, like farmers’ attitude and strategic management.
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spelling pubmed-97940652022-12-28 The association of herd performance indicators with dairy cow longevity: An empirical study Han, Ruozhu Mourits, Monique Steeneveld, Wilma Hogeveen, Henk PLoS One Research Article The associations between reproductive performance, milk yield and health status with the risk of culling, and thus with a cow’s longevity, have been well documented at the individual cow level. Associations at individual cow level may, however, not be valid at herd level due to interrelated herd management aspects and/or policy restrictions. The objective of this study was to explore the association of herd performance indicators with herd-level dairy cow longevity under Dutch production conditions. Longevity was expressed by three different measures, viz. age at culling, lifetime milk production of culled cows and culling rate. The evaluated herd performance indicators included factors on milk production, youngstock rearing, reproduction and health performance as registered on 10 719 Dutch commercial dairy herds during the period 2007–2016. Averaged over herds and the evaluated period, the age of culled milking cows was 2 139 days (5.8 years, SD±298 days), the lifetime milk production of culled cows was 31 238 kg (SD±7,494 kg), and the culling rate was 0.24 (SD±0.08). A mixed linear regression modelling approach was applied to evaluate the association of each of the three longevity measures with the selected herd performance indicators. The results indicated that only four herd performance indictors (herd size, herd expansion, heifer ratio and the proportion of cows with potential subclinical ketosis) shared significant associations with all three longevity variables. Generally, the strength of the associations between each of the evaluated longevity measures and herd performance indicators was only limited. The absence of strong associations between the longevity measures and herd performance indicators reveal that there is potential of extending cattle longevity without affecting the herd performance in terms of milk production, reproduction and health. Moreover, only part of the observed variance in longevity among the herds over time was explained by the herd performance variables, indicating that differences in longevity at herd level may predominantly be determined by other factors, like farmers’ attitude and strategic management. Public Library of Science 2022-12-27 /pmc/articles/PMC9794065/ /pubmed/36574397 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278204 Text en © 2022 Han et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Han, Ruozhu
Mourits, Monique
Steeneveld, Wilma
Hogeveen, Henk
The association of herd performance indicators with dairy cow longevity: An empirical study
title The association of herd performance indicators with dairy cow longevity: An empirical study
title_full The association of herd performance indicators with dairy cow longevity: An empirical study
title_fullStr The association of herd performance indicators with dairy cow longevity: An empirical study
title_full_unstemmed The association of herd performance indicators with dairy cow longevity: An empirical study
title_short The association of herd performance indicators with dairy cow longevity: An empirical study
title_sort association of herd performance indicators with dairy cow longevity: an empirical study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9794065/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36574397
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278204
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