Influence of diseases and metabolic disorders on cow weight changes

• Main Authors: Šárka Podlahová, Luboš Smutný, Miloslav Šoch
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Agroprint Timisoara 2012-10-01
• Series: Scientific Papers Animal Science and Biotechnologies
• Subjects: cows; diseases; metabolic disorder; weight
• Online Access: http://spasb.ro/index.php/spasb/article/view/402

Requirements on increasing economic efficiency of cattle breeding force farmers to use the latest up-to-datetechnology for monitoring and management of farming quality. Regular weighing and data processing can forinstance discover mistakes that can indicate defects, e.g. nutrition deficiencies, incorrect embryonic development,health problems, demanding nursing intervention. The aim of the research was to monitor manifestations of diseasesand metabolic disorders in the course of weight curve based on data from an automated system for weighing the liveweight of dairy cows. There was used in the weighing unit for milking robots Astronaut A3 (Lely company) to obtainweight data of individual cows. There were selected dairy cows with the longest period of lactation or already dryingoff, and especially dairy cows with various health problems for study. Limiting values of weight changes wereestablished after assembling a general equation of mass curve. In the sphere of the diseases there was manifestedonly ketosis in the weight curves with a loss of 10.2 kg / day (38% weight loss). The results of the study will beapplied for compiling algorithm that will be implemented in the complete management system of cattle breeding,monitoring the dairy cows every day and highlight possible deviations exceeding of physiological changes in weight.