Effect of Weaning on Growth Performance and Health Status of Crossbred Calves
Abstract
The present study entitled "Effect of weaning on growth performance and health status of crossbred calves" was performed at Livestock Farm Complex, College of Veterinary Science and A.H., Mhow. Twelve calves were selected at the age of 6 days after calving and divided randomly into two groups, control (suckled) and treatment (weaned), with six calves in each group. The duration of the study was 90 days. Growth performance values such as average body weight, daily gain, body length and height at wither were found to be significantly higher in suckled calves as compared to weaned calves, while the average incidence of diseases in weaned calves (50.00%) was found to be higher than in suckled calves (33.33%). The results indicate better performance of suckled calves than weaned calves.
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Introduction
Crossbred cows contribute 28.0% of total milk production in the country and average milk yield (kg/day) of crossbred and indigenous cows are 7.22 and 3.34, respectively (Livestock Census, 2019). Calf rearing during the milk feeding period is a laborious management practice on livestock farms. Therefore, calf management should be scientific, proper and appropriate. Rearing after birth may have a significant impact on subsequent performance and behaviour of animals (Soberon et al., 2012). It is done either by natural suckling or artificial rearing. Artificial rearing involves the separation of neonatal calves from the dam and rearing them without suckling from their mother, a practice called weaning. Under the artificial rearing system, morbidity and mortality could be reduced significantly. The most common reasons for adopting this practice are the accurate recording of milk yield, the economical and scientific feeding of the calves, the facilitation of the mechanization and automation of farm operations such as machine milking, the saving of labour cost and ensuring clean milk production (Singh et al., 2017). Considering the significance of calf weaning, an experiment was designed to study the effect of weaning on the growth performance and health status of crossbred calves.
Conclusion
The results indicate that all the growth traits, namely average body weight, average daily gain, and body measurements, showed an increasing trend over the experimental duration in suckling calves as compared to non-suckling or weaned calves. The higher live weight of suckling calves strongly favours the maternal instinct of the experimental animals. The experiment also revealed that the overall incidence of diseases was quite high in weaned calves, which indicates that unweaned calves remain healthier on account of natural suckling rather than weaned calves.
References
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