Der Einfluss des Kuhgewichts auf die Betriebsrentabilität und auf die ökonomischen Gewichte der Fleischrindmerkmale

Abstract

Abstract. Title of paper: Impact of mature cow weight on farm profitability and economic weights of beef cattle traits The impact of mature cow weight on the profitability of beef cattle farming and on the economic importance of 10 performance and functional traits was analyzed. The examined traits were: calving performance, stillbirth and calf losses till weaning, weight of calves at birth, at 120 and at 205 days of age, mature weight of cows, conception rates of heifers and cows and productive lifetime of cows. The cow weight was varied from 500 to 700 kg in 50 kg intervals. The economic efficiency of all farming systems was expressed as profit per cow and year. The economic importance of a trait (marginal economic value) was defined as partial derivative of the profit function with respect to trait mean. The program package ECOWEIGHT was used for all calculations. The results showed that beef cattle farming with all cow weight classes could be profitable when including subsidies in the incomes of a farm. Without subsidies, a positive profitability can be reached only when keeping small-framed cows (500 to 550 kg). In all modelled production systems, the most important trait was conception rate of cows followed by weaning weight of calves (at 205 days of age) for light cows or productive lifetime of cows in systems with heavy cows.

Economic values for health and feed efficiency traits of dual-purpose cattle in marginal areas

“…This negative economic value was caused by the fact that revenues from heavier culled cows did not cover the higher costs associated with increased energy requirement for cow maintenance. Similar results have been reported by such authors as Fernández-Perea and Jiménez (2004), Keller et al (2009), and Komlósi et al (2010). In our study, mature weight of animals was considered to be a separate trait which, to avoid double-counting, could be changed by selection independently of growth rates of young animals (Wolfová and Wolf, 2013).…”

“…Relative economic values of 3 to 9% for calving interval (which is an alternative expression of conception rate) have been estimated in dairy (Hietala et al, 2014) and beef cattle (Phocas et al, 1998) herds. In contrast, Keller et al (2009) calculated even higher relative economic importance of cow conception rate (30%) among all of those traits analyzed in a beef production system.…”