Productivity, management and disease in dairy cattle

Abstract

There is a widely held view that increased productivity and intensification of dairy cow management is necessarily associated with reduced welfare and conversely extensive systems are good. This is a gross over simplification and in some cases plainly wrong. However the main problem besetting the industry is that we still have no reliable measure of how well the cow is coping with the stresses imposed by this search for greater efficiency. The three main reasons for involuntary culling are infertility, mastitis (including SCC) and lameness. Together with weight and condition score and some simple behavioral parameters these offer a practical yardstick to measure herd welfare. However we still need to develop our understanding of the fundamental etiology of these conditions and the cost benefits of any management intervention since we may well need to weigh them differently under different circumstances.