Multidisciplinary approach for dairy cow longevity

In a review paper, recently published in CAB Reviews, leading European scientists, including scientists of Wageningen University and Wageningen UR Livestock Research, advocate for a multidisciplinary approach to understand and manage adaptation to a new lactation aiming at an improvement of cow welfare and longevity.

Enhancing longevity by reducing involuntary culling and consequently increasing productive life and lifetime production of dairy cows is not only a strategy to improve farm’s profit, but is also related to improved animal welfare and feed efficiency. High rates of involuntary culling in dairy cows are mainly attributed to fertility problems, mastitis and locomotive disorders.

Biological mechanisms are metabolic adaptation, oxidative stress, immune function and inflammation, and feed intake capacity. Although relationships between these mechanisms become increasingly clear, these relationships are complex and not yet completely understood. Appropriate management of dairy cows in the transition period can facilitate cows to adapt to a new lactation.

Nutritional and management strategies to support adaptation are divided into strategies to restrict energy intake in the dry period, to improve energy intake in early lactation, to repartition energy between milk and body tissue, and strategies to support fat or carbohydrate metabolism. The success of various strategies however is often hampered by the complexity of interactions and high between-cow variation. A multidisciplinary approach is necessary to understand these complex interactions.

The publication in CAB Reviews resulted from two workshops, sponsored by BASF (Germany) and organised by some of the authors in Dummerstorf, Germany (2012) and Piacenza, Italy (2013). Topic of both workshops was ‘Metabolism and immune function of high-yielding dairy cows.’