For several mammalian species, it has been shown that fetal and early postnatal nutrition has a role in long-term lipid and glucose metabolism of the offspring, and it thus also may have consequences on milk yield in the dairy cow. For instance, high-energy diets during the last weeks of pregnancy may result in increased glycemia, which in turn, may alter fetal adipose tissue development. Howev...

Many governments have signed up to greenhouse gas emission (GHGE) reduction programmes under their national climate change obligations. Recently, it has been suggested that the use of extended lactations in dairy herds could result in reduced GHGE. Dairy GHGE were modelled on a national basis and the model was used to compare emissions from lactations of three different lengths (305, 370 and 44...

The present experiment was conducted to investigate dietary effects of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) on sow traits related to piglet survival and growth performance. A total of 23 gestating sows were fed either a standard lactation diet (control diet [CON]) or the CON supplemented with 1.3% CLA (cis-9, trans-11 and trans-10, cis-12) from day 108 of gestation until weaning (4 wk after parturiti...

Twelve lactating cattle × yak hybrids (B. taurus × B. grunniens) were investigated on five experimental pastures (Sites 1-5), following an up- and downward transhumance route (3,200, 4,000, 4,500, 4,000 and 2,600 m a.s.l.). Hybrids were kept in replicated groups of two (low SD) and four animals per paddock (high SD). As a control, yaks (with calves) were included at low SD at Sites 2-4. Perform...

A total of 6604 test-day records belonging to 1651 lactations of 784 Egyptian Zaraibi goats were used to generate and evaluate several simplified milk yield recording plans based on the yield of a single monthly milking, adjusted or unadjusted for interval between milkings and for production level. Loss of precision associated with simplified designs was evaluated by comparing estimated lactati...

A 2-yr study investigated effects of different levels of concentrate supplementation on milk production, composition, and lactation curves in pastured dairy goats. For both years, 44 Alpine goats (Capra hircus; 55 +/- 11 kg body weight) were randomly allocated to 4 groups. Animals were supplemented with 0.66 (treatments A and B), 0.33 (treatment C), or 0 kg of concentrate (treatment D) per kg o...

The objective of the study was to compare ranking of Sahiwal bulls selected on the basis of highest lactation milk yield of their dams with their estimated breeding values (EBVs) using an animal model. Data on 23,761 lactation milk yield records of 5,936 cows from five main Livestock Experiment Stations in Punjab province of Pakistan (1964-2004) were used for the study. At present the young A.I...

This study investigated the improvement in genetic evaluation of fertility traits by using production traits as secondary traits (MILK = 305-d milk yield, FAT = 305-d fat yield, and PROT = 305-d protein yield). Data including 471,742 records from first lactations of Denmark Holstein cows, covering the years of inseminations during first lactations from 1995 to 2004, were analyzed. Six fertility...