The dairy calf mortality : the causes of calf death during ten years at a large dairy farm in Korea

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the calf death and analyse the causes of the mortality by based on medical records and autopsy findings during 10 years in a large dairy farm. Total of 1,361 calf born and 146 calf dead during the invested period. Mortality rate was 10.7% and showed the big difference by year-specific mortality from 2.8% (4 calves) to 19.2% (28 calves). The highest rate of mortality was 1 week age (18.5%, 27 calves) and followed by 2 week age (11.6%, 17 calves) and mortality of more old calf tended to be reduced. The death less than 4 weeks and 8 weeks of age of the entire mortality accounted for 41.1% (60/146 calves) and 70.0% (102/146 calves), respectively. Causes of calf death were digestive diseases (53.4%), respiratory diseases (17.1%), musculoskeletal disease (8.2%), and systemic disease (8.2%) in order. Specific causes of calf death was highest in enteritis (43.2%), followed by pneumonia (14.4%), sepsis (8.2%) and fractures (3.4%). Seasonally, most of calf death happened in winter (48.6%) and then fall (21.2%). This results showed that enteritis and pneumonia are the main reason of calf death but other reasons were involved in calf death on the based on autopsy finding. On going research relating factors of calf mortality is needed.

Periurban outbreaks of bovine calf scours in Northern India caused byCryptosporidiumin association with other enteropathogens

“…A heavy mortality of 43% was recorded in the present study. A similar high mortality has been reported due to diarrhoea in the USA (57%) and Korea (53·4%) in unweaned dairy calves [56][57]. Among the various risk factors analysed during the study, poor hygiene, overcrowding, bad calf nutrition, including deprivation of colostrum and inadequate milk feeding, and sudden weather changes were found to be the major epidemiological factors.…”

A novel multiplex PCR-electronic microarray assay for rapid and simultaneous detection of bovine respiratory and enteric pathogens

“…In the UK, an estimated 1.9 million animals are affected by bovine respiratory disease each year costing the UK beef industry approximately £60 million (NADIS, 2007). Enteric diseases are responsible for more than a half of deaths among pre-weaned dairy calves in the USA and other countries (Gomez and Weese, 2017;Cho and Yoon, 2014;Hur et al, 2013;Azizzadeh et al, 2012). Both respiratory and enteric diseases continue to be major health threats to the global cattle industry despite many intervention strategies such as vaccination, medications, and herd management.…”

A new comprehensive method for detection of livestock-related pathogenic viruses using a target enrichment system

“…Proper control of infectious diseases greatly affects productivity of domestic animals. The data that infectious diarrhea causes death of more than 50% of the calf less than 1 month of age illuminate importance of control of infectious diseases for productivity of domestic animals [5,22]. Delayed fattening of pigs due to influenza A (H1N1) virus infection [2]; a decrease in the milk yield of cattle by bovine viral diarrhea virus, Akabane virus, and bovine coronavirus [1,7,18,19]; and a decline of reproductive performance of cattle under the influence of Akabane virus [18] also represent examples of ill effects of infectious diseases for productivity of domestic animals.…”

“…Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has been widely used for comprehensive detection of viruses and several studies reported successful identification of many novel viruses in various animal samples [4,8,10,22]. Host-derived nucleic acids represent the majority of the nucleic acids in most of clinical/field samples and presence of low levels of nucleic acids of infectious agents often makes their detection and identification difficult.…”