Influence of common health disorders on the length of productive life and stayability in German Holstein cows

Abstract

The aim of this study was to infer phenotypic and genetic effects of health disorders on longevity traits, considering Holstein dairy cow records from large-scale co-operator herds. In this regard, we focused on 13 different disease traits and on 2 longevity definitions: length of productive life (LPL) and stayability (STAY). The LPL was defined as the interval in days from first calving to culling. For LPL, we considered 90,215 cows with known culling dates. For binary STAY, we defined 3 survival stages in the first 3 lactations: from calving to DIM 59, from DIM 60 to DIM 299, and from DIM 300 to the next calving date. Due to the earlier trait recording possibilities, 129,386 cows were considered for the STAY analysis. Accordingly, the presence or absence of diseases in lactation stages were defined as binary traits. A further data set for the 90,215 cows with a culling date included the subjective culling reasons defined by farmers. Comparison of culling reasons, as defined by farmers, with diagnoses from the disease data set indicated some disagreements. For example, only 18.71% of the cows with the farmer culling reason "metabolic diseases" were diagnosed with a metabolic disorder. Better agreements were identified for mastitis (84.09%). Phenotypically, in most cases, occurrence of diseases at different lactation stages had negative influence on LPL and STAY. In this regard, we identified strong detrimental effects of clinical mastitis and of metabolic disorders from early lactation stages on longevity traits. For example, the presence of clinical mastitis in the first stage of first lactation was associated with LPL decrease of 95.35 d. Using generalized linear mixed models for binary health disorders, heritabilities ranged from <0.01 (±0.079 standard error) for ruminal acidosis early in first, second, and third lactation to 0.24 (±0.039) for interdigital hyperplasia from the last stage in third lactation. Heritabilities from single-trait and bivariate animal models ranged from 0.03 (±0.003) to 0.10 (±0.007) for LPL, and from 0.01 (±0.002) to 0.06 (±0.007) for STAY. Genetic correlations between longevity traits and health disorders were mostly negative (i.e., favorable in a breeding sense). For improvements to longevity genetic evaluations for young bulls with a limited number of daughter culling dates, we suggest consideration of health traits from a well-organized co-operator herd monitoring system as early longevity predictors, especially for censored data. Genetic correlations between mastitis from different lactation stages with LPL and STAY ranged from −0.28 (±0.07) to −0.69 (±0.05), and from −0.26 (±0.08) to −0.77 (±0.08), respectively. Interestingly, only diagnoses for dermatitis digitalis showed opposite results phenotypically and genetically. Strong genetic associations between ruminal acidosis and STAY were observed (genetic correlations: −0.48 ± 0.18 to −0.98 ± 0.31), supporting the inferred phenotypic associations. Genetic correlations between longevity traits LPL and STAY were quite large, betw...

Across-generation effects of maternal heat stress during late gestation on production, female fertility and longevity traits in dairy cows

“…Shabalina et al . (2020) identified strong associations between early diagnoses for health disorders with LPL and stayability rates in adult cows. Generally, LPL is a bio-index combining a broad pattern of functional and health traits (Ahlman et al ., 2011).…”

Invited review: Academic and applied approach to evaluating longevity in dairy cows

“…Second, longevity as a genetic trait is reported to be lowly heritable worldwide (Madgwick and Goddard, 1989;Vollema and Groen, 1996;Sewalem et al, 2005b). Heritability estimates have ranged between 0.03 and 0.10 when measuring longevity as LPL and between 0.01 and 0.06 when measuring it as a stayability trait (Shabalina et al, 2020). Similarly, the heritability of LPL was found to be low (0.002 to 0.031) when measured in intervals of 1, 3, 6, and 12 mo after first calving; however, these estimates did increase (0.115 and 0.149) when measured as a single 72-mo period after first calving (van Pelt et al, 2015).…”

“…Health disorders, such as lameness and mastitis, have a significant effect on milk production (Warnick et al, 2001;Seegers et al, 2003), are associated with reduced reproductive performance (Santos et al, 2004;Pinedo et al, 2016) and longevity (Randall et al, 2016;Gussmann et al, 2019;Shabalina et al, 2020), and are considerably affected by environmental factors. For example, flooring type and slipperiness, barn cleanliness and design (i.e., sharp turns), bedding type and quantity, and stall design (i.e., dimensions and base) are environmental risk factors associated with increased odds of lameness (Barker et al, 2010;Solano et al, 2015).…”

“…For example, the use of the artificial growth hormone recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) has been banned in the EU and Canada since the late 1990s due to concerns regarding animal health and welfare (Brinckman, 2000;Turner, 2001). A report by the Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare (1999) recommended that rBST not be used in dairy cattle due to an increased risk of clinical mastitis, lameness, reproductive disorders, and other production-related diseases-factors that also are associated with reduced longevity (Shabalina et al, 2020). Regulatory bans on the use of rBST, therefore, have likely reduced the risk of health disorders and premature culling.…”

Health traits in current dairy cattle breeding: A review

“…Gernand and Koenig (2017) found genetic correlations ranging from 0.19 between RP and interval from calving to pregnancy and 0.20 between RP and interval from calving to the first service, but according to them, the occurrence of CYS was strongly correlated with the interval from calving to the first service (0.70) and interval from the first service to pregnancy (0.83). Shabalina et al (2020) identified strong phenotypic detrimental effects of CM and metabolic disorders from early lactation stages on longevity traits in German Holstein cows. They estimated strong genetic correlations (up to -0.77) between longevity traits and CM, and between longevity and KET (-0.76).…”