Longevity and Milk Production Improvement in Dairy Cows Using Plant-Derived Products

Abstract

Floris Herrema, Herrik Bieleman, Marco Hoekstra, Joao Gomes

The goal and mandate of dairy farming is the production of milk from healthy animals. In consideration of this objec- tive, the company Animal Health Vision - AHV developed an innovation plan that is based on a twofold strategy: first, to develop innovative solutions and up-to-date protocols for the effective use of animal health products, and second, to advance animal health, welfare, and the ability of dairy cows ability to withstand infectious diseases, ultimately resulting in a decreased reliance on antibiotics. The aim of this work is to assess the impact of AHV products on a cow's lifetime (longevity) and milk production. The research was conducted on a dataset consisting of 162.057 milk production records consisting of 1208 Dutch farms and 213.047 animals. The longevity of the dairy cows was ex- tracted for 64.467 cows selected from 3171 farms. The results show that AHV products QuickTM and ExtraTM improve longevity by an average of 0.7 years when compared to animals that did not receive such products. The average lon- gevity of animals that received at least one of such AHV products is 6.52 years. Furthermore, we could show that for the top 10 largest farms, there is an increased average milk yield of 1.6% per lactation as compared to the animals that did not receive any AHV product.

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