Transition cow nutrition and management strategies of dairy herds in the northeastern US: Part III – Associations of management and dietary factors with analytes, health, milk yield, and reproduction
Description
The objective was to evaluate relationships between putative periparturient management factors at the pen- and herd-level with metabolic- and inflammation-related analytes, health disorders, milk yield, and reproductive performance. Multiparous and primiparous cows from 72 farms in the Northeastern US were enrolled in a prospective cohort study. Farms were visited three times during the prepartum and postpartum periods: far-off dry, close-up dry, and fresh periods. For the prepartum period, our results support increasing the proportion of particles on the 19-mm sieve of the Penn State Particle Separator, optimizing bunk space, and not overfeeding ME to decrease the prevalence of elevated postpartum NEFA, BHB, and Hp concentrations, decrease disorder incidence, maximize milk yield, and improve pregnancy risk to first service. For the fresh period, our results generally support optimizing bunk space, avoiding commingling, increasing the feeding frequency, avoiding high physically effective undigested neutral detergent fiber (NDF) after 240 h of in vitro fermentation and high total fermentable carbohydrate diets while optimizing the inclusion of forage NDF, and ensuring adequate diet metabolizable energy (ME) and metabolizable protein to reduce the prevalence of elevated postpartum NEFA, BHB, and Hp concentrations, minimize disorder incidence, maximize milk yield, and improve pregnancy risk to first service. At the herd-level, our results generally support not vaccinating in the calving pen, minimizing the number of prepartum and postpartum pen moves, and avoiding long stays in the calving pen after parturition to reduce the prevalence of elevated biomarker concentrations, decrease disorder incidence, increase milk yield and improve reproductive performance.