Abstract
A study was conducted to identify and estimate the prevalence rate of reproductive disorder and to assess the possible risk factors and reproductive performances of smallholder dairy cattle in and around Fitche town from December 2013 to June 2014. Eighty one dairy farms (average herd size=4.8) were visited and data on reproductive performance indicator, cow attributes, type of mating, body condition score and general farm management were collected. The overall mean value for Calving to Conception Interval (CCI) (n=66) and Duration After Last Calving (DALC) (n=56) for pregnant and nonpregnant cattle were 169 and 264 days respectively. The least squares mean CCI was higher (p<0.05) in parity number 1 and lower in parity number 4 and above. Management system significantly influenced (p=0.00) the least squares mean DALC, where the non-pregnant cows in the semi-intensive management system had lower value. The overall mean value of Age At First Calving (AFC) (n=35) was 36 months. The overall average number of services per conception and the first service conception rate were 1.9 (n=66) and 28.4% (n=116) respectively. The prevalence of abortion, dystocia (assisted parturition), retained fetal membrane, vulval discharge/endometritis, repeat breeder and pre-weaning calf mortality were 8.4%, 9.6%, 12.6%, 5.4%, 14% and 13.6% respectively. The present estimate of extended CCI, DALC and reduced first service conception rate indicates poor reproductive performances of smallholder dairy cows in the study area. Moreover, the pre-weaning calf mortality rate is highly significant. Accordingly, further detailed investigation is necessary to identify and quantify the specific disorders and associated interacting factors attributing to poor performance and to determine the causes and predisposing factors behind high calf mortality.
Abstract from the paper’s OpenAlex record, shown for indexing and research. Copyright remains with the authors or the publisher. Read at the source ↗
The text the model read, with the source record’s inline markup (italics, sub- and superscripts) rendered and its character entities decoded; quote offsets refer to the raw text.
Claims 0
Judged off_topic: no plant question — claims were not extracted. This is a scope decision by the model, not a statement about the paper’s findings.