Factors Affecting Dystocia in Cattle

Abstract

The paper reviews the various factors affecting dystocia in cattle. It is based mainly on the recent studies found in the literature of the subject but refers occasionally to some older papers as well. The factors are grouped into four main categories: direct factors, phenotypic factors related to calf and cow, non-genetic and genetic factors. The first group includes malpresentations and uterine torsion. The second one includes: calf birth weight, multiple calvings, perinatal mortality, cow pelvic area, cow body weight and body condition at calving, gestation length. The non-genetic factors are: cow age and parity, year and season of calving, place of calving, maintenance practises, disorders, calf sex and nutrition. Other non-genetic factors are the level of hormones in the periparturient period, in vitro production of embryos and embryo cloning. Finally, the genotypes of cow, bull and calf, inbreeding, muscular hypertrophy, selection and quantitative trait loci form the fourth group of genetic factors.

Factors associated with frequency of abortions recorded through Dairy Herd Improvement test plans

“…Thurmond et al (1990b) reported that abortion rate was higher among cows that had experienced a previous abortion compared with those that had not. All causes of higher abortion frequencies for earlier parities are unknown, although parity differences in traits such as dystocia and stillbirth have been reported (VanTassell et al, 2003;Cole et al, 2007;Zaborski et al, 2009;Norman et al, 2010) and would be expected to have an effect on subsequent reproductive health. A contrasting result was found by Thurmond et al (1990b), who reported that abortion rate increased after cows reached 5 yr of age, after 5 pregnancies, or after 4 calvings.…”

Bioeconomic factors of beef heifer maturity to consider when establishing criteria to optimally select and/or retain herd replacements

“…In a review of the literature, Zaborski et al (2009) categorizes dystocia into 4 groups. These categories are further divided into individual causes totaling 21 different factors.…”

“…The number of heifers with maturities greater than 71% of true mature weight at the time of breeding is limited to 11, with the most mature having a maturity of 84.37%, making it difficult to say anything definitive about what the natural rate of dystocia might be. As a complex health issue, dystocia can be caused by varying factors other than maturity (Zaborski et al, 2009). It is expected that dystocia will occur at some "natural" rate greater than 0 independent of maturity.…”

Left oblique laparotomy for caesarean section in a cow due to dystocia

“…According to Lucky et al, (2016) the prevalence of dystocia was 21.18% in cattle and 12.5% in goats in syhlet district in Bangladesh. In cows the incidence of dystocia is higher in heifer than pluriparous (Berger et al, 1992;Zaborski et al, 2009). Incidence of dystocia due to cervical cause was seen to vary from 11.1 to 16.7 percent (Wehrend et al, 2003) in cows.…”