Dairy cattle replacement under changing agri-environmental policies

Abstract

Culling and replacement of dairy cowsCulling and replacement of dairy cows is a routine but important aspect of dairy farm management. Culling is defined by removal of a cow from the herd for slaughter, salvage, disposal (due to death) or for dairy sale with intent to continue production (Fetrow et al., 2006).In theory, culled cows are replaced by younger, suitable heifers. In the Netherlands, the average annual replacement rate has been varying between 20% and 30% in the first two decades of the 21 st century (CRV, 2019;Nor et al., 2014a). This means that dairy cattle longevity in the Netherlands of 5.8 years is far below the biological potential lifespan (Han et al., 2022). These replacements can be either due to economic reasons (voluntary) or due to health considerations, hence involuntary . Fetrow et al. (2006) defined two types of culling namely, economic, and forced or biological. A large part of the replacements is due to economic reasons with the intent of improving production, reproduction, and the health of the producing herd. On the other hand, and in minority, biological or forced culling occurs when cows are incurable, permanently unable to produce, reproduce or recover or when cows die suddenly or are euthanized. Since most replacements of dairy cows are