In this study, maternal effects were described as age of dam at first and second calving, first-lactation body condition score (BCS) of the dam during gestation, and milk yield of the dam. The impact of these effects on first-lactation daughter BCS, fertility, and test-day milk yield was assessed. The effect of milk yield of dam on daughter 305-d yield in the latter's first 3 lactations was als...

The objective was to quantify the strength of the relationship between body condition score (BCS) and live weight (LW) in pasture-based Holstein-Friesian dairy cattle, and to determine the kg LW per unit BCS. A total of 26021 test-day records with information on both BCS (1-10 scale, where 1 is emaciated and 10 is obese) and LW across 1110 lactations from one research farm were used in the anal...

Both clinical veterinarians and veterinary pathologists are often presented with a severely emaciated animal and in a majority of cases the animal’s body condition is due to natural disease. Unfortunately in some cases there is no underlying natural disease and the animal’s condition is human induced (animal abuse, specifically neglect). In veterinary medicine neglect is separated into four man...

This article describes the result of a study focusing on the keratinisation degree of rumen mucosa and changes in the body condition of sheep that had grazed for 20 days in a pasture densely covered with Brachypodium rupestre. Grazing in this type of pasture can reduce the probability of fires in a Mediterranean mountain setting. However, foraging in areas with a prevalence of Brachypodium rupe...

AIM The aim was to study the effect of the transition to body condition score (BCS) and ultrasonographic back fat thickness (USG BFT) in crossbred cows. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 101 multiparous crossbred cows in advanced pregnancy from organized dairy farm were taken up for study. The cows were grouped according to transition stage, i.e. far off dry (FOD), close up dry (CUD) and fresh...

The objective of this study was to confirm the relationship among body condition score at the time around parturition, milk yield in subsequent lactation, reproductive efficiency and BCS development in Czech Fleckvieh dairy cows. The BCS and milk yield were measured once a month and the cows were divided into groups according to their BCS before and after calving. Next, data from the database o...

Under tropical condition the BCS may influence the feed intake and metabolism leading to variation in economic parameters. This study investigated the BCS as a regulator of milk yield (MY) and composition (MC) in dairy animals. A total of 154 animals, comprising Azakheli (AZ) and Nili-Ravi (NR) buffaloes, Holstein Friesian (HF), Jersey (JC), Sahiwal (SW), Achai (AC) and crossbreds (XB) cattle a...

This study explores the feasibility of estimating the Body Condition Score (BCS) of cows from digital images by employing statistical shape analysis and regression machines. The shapes of body cows are described through a number of variations from a unique average shape. Specifically, Kernel Principal Component Analysis is used to determine the components describing the many ways in which the b...

The objective of this research was to estimate daily genetic correlations between longitudinal body condition score (BCS) and health traits by using a random regression animal model in first-lactation Holsteins. The use of indicator traits may increase the rate of genetic progress for functional traits relative to direct selection for functional traits. Indicator traits of interest are those th...

Valacta (Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Québec, Canada) is the Canadian Dairy Herd Improvement organization responsible for milk recording in Québec and Atlantic provinces. Up to 14 first-lactation body condition score (BCS) records were collected per cow (average of 2.5 records per cow), allowing the trait to be described by a random regression animal model so that animals could be ranked by the sha...