Opinions are divided about the degree to which an udder should be empty after milking. While many farmers, based on their experience, try to empty the udder as completely as possible, their colleagues as well as some representatives of the milking industry and some milking consultants have a more relaxed attitude. They argue that it is completely normal that milk remains in the udder after milk...

In dairy cows the milk associated energy output in early lactation exceeds the input via voluntary feed intake. To spare glucose for mammary lactose synthesis, peripheral insulin sensitivity (IS) is reduced and fat mobilization is stimulated. For these processes a link between IS and the endocrine functions of adipose tissue (AT) is likely; we thus aimed to characterise the mRNA expression from...

Multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) has gained enormous popularity in the neuroimaging community over the past few years. At the group level, most MVPA studies adopt an “information based” approach in which the sign of the effect of individual subjects is discarded and a non-directional summary statistic is carried over to the second level. This is in contrast to a directional “activation based”...

This paper describes the particularities of the anatomy and morphology of the dairy sheep udder and the current implications on machine milkability. The sheep mammary gland is an exocrine epithelial gland mainly constituted of tubulo-alveolar parenchyma with alveoli and well differentiated cisterns. Two anatomical compartments are used for milk storage: alveolar and cisternal, the large-cistern...

This review presents genetic, phenotypic, environmental and other factors influencing functional longevity in dairy cattle. High yielding cows show a lower risk of culling than low producing cows. Cows with a lower milk yield have an approximately 2.7 times greater risk of culling as compared to cows with an average milk production. Genetic estimation of the length of productive life is possibl...

Udder performance and health are important traits in dairy cattle worldwide. The present study aimed to explore the association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) STAT5B gene with milk mastitis related traits. included 201 cows three pure breeds (i.e. Holstein Friesian, Jersey Achai) two crossbred at four established farms Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. samples were analysed for somatic c...

OBJECTIVES To describe the distribution of adipose tissue within and adjacent to entheses in order to assess its functional significance at attachment sites. METHODS Entheses were removed from 29 different sites in the limbs of formalin fixed, elderly, dissecting room cadavers and the samples prepared for paraffin and/or methylmethacrylate histology. Entheses from four young volunteers with n...

Morphological traits of the whole udder (circumference, width, height, and length), teats (angle, length and width), udder cistern (teat opening and cistern height), and milk yield were measured over one lactation in a total of 18 ewes (nine Chilota and nine Suffolk Down sheep) belonging to the same experimental flock (Centro Experimental INIA Butalcura, Chiloé, Chile). Analysis of variance sho...

Morphological udder traits have recently become of greater interest from farmers to researchers. In dairy ewes, the udder is very important due to its physiological and conformational characteristics. External udder traits were measured in ewes (Ovis aries L.) of nine genotypes (355 ewes) created of the basis of Improved Valachian (IV), Tsigai (T), and Lacaune (LC) breeds (six traits; 1185 data...

In this study we hypothesized that the lameness of early lactation dairy cows would have an impact on inline biomarkers, such as rumination time (RT), milk fat (%), protein fat/protein ratio (F/P), lactose (L, %), electrical conductivity all udder quarters, body weight (BW), temperature reticulorumen content (TRR), pH (pH), and walking activity (activity). All 30 lame (LCs) used in experiment h...