Abstract #457

# 457
Impact of metabolic, digestive and postpartum disorders on milk yield.
G. Pérez-Hernández*1, J. G. García-Muñiz1, H. A. Ramírez-Ramírez2, A. Ruíz-Flores1, 1Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, Chapingo, México, 2Iowa State University, Ames, IA.

Milk yield (MY) is influenced by DIM, calving season, weather, cow age, physiological state, dry period length, nutrition and health status. A lactation curve model is a useful tool to separate the continuous components of environmental changes and estimate real MY. This study aimed at quantifying the impact of the postpartum incidence of metabolic and digestive disorders on subsequent MY. Daily individual records of MY and health disorders during all lactation were recorded on a commercial dairy farm in the northern region of Mexico. The data set was comprised of 93,580 daily records of 220 Holstein cows representing 382 lactations. Data were obtained from the AFIMILK software from January 2016 to July 2017. The health disorders evaluated during the complete lactation were diarrhea, hypocalcemia, ketosis, laminitis and mastitis. The test-date records of each cow included in the analysis were expanded using the EXPAND procedure of SAS to homogenize the length of lactation to 305 d. To describe the lactation curves of individual cows, Legendre polynomials were fitted using the SAS MIXED procedure. The fitted model included the fixed effects of a high order interaction (test-date, year and month of calving, lactation number and sex of the offspring generated the modeled lactation), health disorder, as well as random and fixed ninth degree Legendre polynomials of DIM. Prevalence disorder was obtained with PROC UNIVARIATE procedure. The proposed modeling estimated losses in daily MY on the day of diagnosis and prevalence for, diarrhea (1.68 kg/d; 0.18), hypocalcemia (6.42 kg/d; 0.05), ketosis (0.67 kg/d; 0.20), laminitis (2.60 kg/d; 0.06) and mastitis (0.73 kg/d; 0.28). There were cumulative decreases in MY during the whole lactation ranging from 219 to 1927 kg per cow after the incidence of diarrhea (504 kg/cow), low calcium concentration (1927 kg/cow), ketosis (202 kg/cow), hock injuries (781 kg/cow), and udder damages (219 kg/cow). These results demonstrate that reduction in milk yield brought on by health challenges may be substantial throughout the lactation and, that country- or region-specific models are needed to better characterize the impact on metabolic disorders on cow productivity and farm profitability.

Key Words: random regression model, lactation curve, Legendre polynomial