Assessing transition cow management in dairy cows for improved health, milk production, pregnancy, and culling outcomes.

Understanding of the social environment has the potential to benefit dairy cow welfare and production. Our aim was to evaluate the associations of stocking density, calving density, days spent in a prepartum group before calving (days spent in close-up, DCU), and the number of days from a pen-filling event (addition of new cows to the prepartum pen) on early-lactation health, production, pregnancy, and culling outcomes in dairy cows. Data were gathered from 2,780 cows in 2 herds.

A survey of foot disinfection practices for control of bovine digital dermatitis: Evaluating solution depth, footbath hygiene, and the potential of footbaths as infection reservoirs for Treponema species.

Bovine digital dermatitis remains a widespread endemic disease of dairy cattle worldwide. Footbathing is commonly used as a control measure and has significant economic and environmental impacts. Few studies document footbathing practices on dairy farms or evaluate their suitability for achieving foot disinfection.

Biomarker and proteome analysis of milk from dairy cows with clinical mastitis: Determining the effect of different bacterial pathogens on the response to infection.

Antimicrobial usage (AMU) could be reduced by differentiating the causative bacteria in cases of clinical mastitis (CM) as either Gram-positive or Gram-negative bacteria or identifying whether the case is culture-negative (no growth, NG) mastitis. Immunoassays for biomarker analysis and a Tandem Mass Tag (TMT) proteomic investigation were employed to identify differences between samples of milk from cows with CM caused by different bacteria. A total of 94 milk samples were collected from cows diagnosed with CM across seven farms in Scotland, categorized by severity as mild (score 1), moderate (score 2), or severe (score 3).