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UK funding (£335,404): Using systems biology to understand and routinely predict health and welfare traits in dairy cattle Ukri4 Mar 2013 UK Research and Innovation, United Kingdom
Overview
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Using systems biology to understand and routinely predict health and welfare traits in dairy cattle
| Abstract | The welfare of dairy cattle continues to gain importance, both nationally and internationally. However, welfare research has tended to focus on indicators of poor welfare such as disease or health status and longevity. More detailed studies of welfare on-farm have tended to be limited, using small numbers of animals or farms and of short duration. Recently, however, farmers are engaging with more detailed levels of on-farm recording, aided by farm management software and encouraged by farm assurance schemes they participate in, which has been shown to be of use in national genetic evaluations and/or benchmarking. Further, recent work by the partners have shown that that routine analysis of milk samples can predict the negative body energy balance in dairy cows, a trait related to metabolic stress and that immune function measures are correlated to health and welfare events such as mastitis, lameness and difficult calvings in dairy cattle. This project will draw together the experience of partners to holistically explore animal health and welfare traits in dairy cattle, focussing on animals from the SAC Dairy Research Centre. The research herd is participating in ongoing genetic selection and feed experiments that produce detailed lifetime records for each animal, including production, health and welfare traits. This project will supplement these data with repeated analyses of immune and inflammatory measures in the blood and milk and weekly spectral analysis of milk. Mathematical models will be used to explore the biological relationships between the immune and inflammatory measures and defined health and welfare events in dairy cows. The health and welfare events include lameness, clinical mastitis, metabolic stress, calving difficulty (including Caesarean) and major reproductive illnesses (e.g., abortion, cystic ovaries). We will explore how the immune and inflammatory traits (supplemented by other key production/fitness data such as somatic cell counts) change before, during and after the defined health and welfare events. If successful, this modelling will result in predictive indicators that could lead to practical early warning systems for poor health and welfare traits in dairy cattle that could be implemented in the field to help explore/define new traits that relate to animal welfare. |
| Category | Research Grant |
| Reference | BB/K002260/1 |
| Status | Closed |
| Funded period start | 04/03/2013 |
| Funded period end | 05/12/2016 |
| Funded value | £335,404.00 |
| Source | https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FK002260%2F1 |
Participating Organisations
| SRUC | |
| Scottish Executive Env and Rural Affairs | |
| UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN | |
| National Milk Records | |
| Dairy Australia | |
| OptiMIR | |
| University of Guelph | |
| University of Alberta |
The filing refers to a past date, and does not necessarily reflect the current state. The current state is available on the following page: Sruc, Edinburgh.
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