Published in Scientific Papers. Series D. Animal Science, Vol. LXIV, Issue 1
Written by Andra SIPOS, Elena IRIMIA, Dinu GAVOJDIAN, Ioana NICOLAE, Alexandru SONEA
The aim of the current study was to evaluate the effects that sire-bulls have on health traits of un-weaned dairy calves. The study was carried out at the Experimental Farm of the Research and Development Institute for Bovine, where health data was collected for two consecutive years, between November 2017 and October 2019, following a number of 119 purebred Romanian Black and White calves, managed under identical conditions. Calves were separated into 7 sire-groups, each one of the bulls having at least 10 descendants born and weaned, the maximum descendants from a sire were 35 calves. The incidence of colibacillosis was influenced by the sire of the calves as following: three calves groups did not developed this disease, one group showed a low susceptibility, one group presented an intermediary genetic predisposition, while two groups showed a significant susceptibility (p≤0.10). Health traits such as rickets, respiratory disease and haemorrhagic enteritis incidences in some sire-descendants groups showed low or lack of susceptibility. Current preliminary results suggest that paternal genetic effects could influence the health of un-weaned dairy calves.
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