Denis Timchenko, a technological consultant for the management and organization of dairy farms of the KC AVM and GAF, shares his thoughts, analyzing the article “Productive longevity of dairy cows and why it is worth reviewing its duration”, “Milk and Farm” 4 (83), August 2024.
Very often, when working with dairy farms, you can hear: “But tell me how long do they live on a modern farm today? Two or three years? Before, cows lived longer and almost never got sick.”
Most often, a cow leaves the farm for two main reasons:
-due to death
-by decision of the farmer/manager.
The first reason is the loss of those animals that you would like to leave in the herd, but cannot due to poor conditions of detention, injury to the animal, poor management, improper prevention and treatment of diseases. That is, all the reasons that fall into the plane of errors in the organization and management of the farm.
The second reason lies in the plane of economic feasibility of further keeping a particular animal on the farm, for example, when it is not planned to increase the dairy herd, but the farm has a high-level program of reproduction and raising replacement young animals and young animals have a significantly higher genetic potential than cows of the 5th-6th and older lactation.
So can we expect that the duration of the productive life of cows will increase given modern views?
Source of information: https://avm-kc.org.ua/…/produktivne-dovgolitta-molocnih…