Effect of Raising Dairy Heifers on Their Performance and Reproduction after 12 Months

Michal Uhrincat, Jan Broucek, Anton Hanus and Peter Kisac
Additional contact information
Michal Uhrincat: National Agricultural and Food Centre, Research Institute of Animal Production Nitra, 951 41 Luzianky, Slovakia
Jan Broucek: National Agricultural and Food Centre, Research Institute of Animal Production Nitra, 951 41 Luzianky, Slovakia
Anton Hanus: National Agricultural and Food Centre, Research Institute of Animal Production Nitra, 951 41 Luzianky, Slovakia
Peter Kisac: National Agricultural and Food Centre, Research Institute of Animal Production Nitra, 951 41 Luzianky, Slovakia

Agriculture, 2021, vol. 11, issue 10, 1-14

Abstract: The objective of this study was to test the hypotheses that a heifer’s growth, health, and reproduction after 12 months are impacted by rearing (feeding/housing) before weaning, their season of birth, and the father’s lineage. Fifty-one Holstein heifers, born during January–March (SB1), April–June (SB2), July–September (SB3), and October–December (SB4) and originating from four fathers, were assigned to one of the three rearing treatments: restricted suckling (RS), calf in a pen with the mother until the 21st day, sucking three times daily, then group pen (6 kg milk) to weaning; unrestricted suckling (US), calf in a pen with foster cows (6 kg milk) to weaning; and conventional rearing (CR), calf in a hutch until the 56th day, then group pen to weaning (milk replacer 6 kg). After weaning on the 84th day, heifers were kept in groups with the same ration. The growth of the live body weight (LBW), health, and reproduction were recorded. The LBW had a tendency to increase from the 360th to the 570th days in the US, and the reduced growth of the LBW was shown in the CR. Heifers of SB2 had the highest LBW at 570 days of age. The ages of the first insemination service and the conception varied significantly among the rearing groups. The results indicate that a heifer rearing method may have a significant impact on their later growth and fertility.

Keywords: livestock farming; dairy cattle welfare; raising; environment; production; fertility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/10/973/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/10/973/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:11:y:2021:i:10:p:973-:d:651227

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().