 In US dairy herds, the current national average age at first calving is 25.2 months. Increasing first-lactation milk yield could improve milk’s life-cycle production efficiency and decrease emissions.  The productive life of dairy Holsteins in the United States born in 2000 decreased by 3.95 months compared with Holstein cows born in 1980. This negative trend needs to be halted to achieve en...

Data included pubertal, reproductive and lactation records of primiparous females produced in a diallel of Angus, Brahman, Hereford, Holstein and Jersey. Brahman heifers were oldest, tallest and heaviest at puberty, while Jersey heifers were youngest, shortest and lightest. Crossbred heifers were 22 d younger (P less than .01) at puberty than straightbred heifers; no significant differences wer...

The objective of this study was to analyze the correlation between Holstein body conformation traits and milk production traits in the Shanghai region. In total, 871 Holstein cows were randomly chosen from 28 dairy farms in Shanghai at second stage of lactation as the object of our study. Five milk production traits, including 305-d milk yield, butter fat percentage, milk protein percentage, pe...

The objectives of this study were to 1) identify highly heterozygous Holstein bulls that are as unrelated as possible and widely used in the US dairy industry; 2) quantify the level of genetic diversity in US Holsteins; and 3) determine the extent of background linkage disequilibrium (BLD) and disease trait associated linkage disequilibrium (DLD) in the US Holstein population. Twenty-three Hols...

This experiment was aimed to study the association between the DGAT1 K232A polymorphism and milk production traits and somatic cell score (SCS) in Iranian Holstein dairy cows. The records of 408 animals from five dairy herds were randomly identified and then genomic DNA was extracted from blood using the modified-salting method described by Miller. RFLP-PCR was performed to obtain all the polym...

Introduction Investigating and comparing the two systems Comparing some technical efficiency ratios and profit Points to note about the comparison Conclusions References Abstract. In this study, budgets of herd dynamics, feed and energy supply, production and profit of alternative dairy farm systems were used to examine the effects of changing a 230 cow Holstein-Friesian (HF) dairy system to a ...

Genetic correlations between first calving interval (CI) and linear type traits in South African Holstein and Jersey cattle were estimated to assess the possibility of using type information as selection criteria for CI. All linear type traits routinely evaluated under the National Genetic Evaluation Programme (18 for Jersey and 17 for Holstein) were considered. Data were obtained from the Nati...

Electrocardiography (ECG) may be used to recognize cardiac disorders. Levels of milk production may change the serum electrolytes which its imbalance has a role in cardiac arrhythmia. Fifty high yielding and fifty low yielding Holstein dairy cows were used in this study. Electrocardiography was recorded by base-apex lead and blood samples were collected from jugular vein for measurement of seru...

Fertility is one of the most important traits in dairy cattle, and has been steadily declining over the last decades. We herein use state-of-the-art genomic tools, including high-throughput SNP genotyping and next-generation sequencing, to identify a 3.3 Kb deletion in the FANCI gene causing the brachyspina syndrome (BS), a rare recessive genetic defect in Holstein dairy cattle. We determine th...

in this study, the incomplete gamma function, an exponential function, a mixed-log function and a polynomial function were evaluated to describe the lactation curve in moroccan holstein-friesian dairy cows. data from 1990 to 1999, comprising 77130 monthly milk yields of 6029 dairy cows in 280 dairy herds, were used. edits were carried out by considering the lactation length (5 d and