项目编号: | BB/K002260/1
|
项目名称: | Using systems biology to understand and routinely predict health and welfare traits in dairy cattle |
作者: | Eileen Wall
|
承担单位: | SRUC
|
批准年: | 2012
|
开始日期: | 2013-04-03
|
结束日期: | 2016-05-12
|
资助金额: | GBP335404
|
资助来源: | UK-BBSRC
|
项目类别: | Research Grant
|
国家: | UK
|
语种: | 英语
|
特色学科分类: | Agri-environmental science
; Animal Science
|
英文摘要: | 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. |
资源类型: | 项目
|
标识符: | http://119.78.100.158/handle/2HF3EXSE/102372
|
Appears in Collections: | 科学计划与规划 气候变化与战略
|
There are no files associated with this item.
|
Recommended Citation: |
Eileen Wall. Using systems biology to understand and routinely predict health and welfare traits in dairy cattle. 2012-01-01.
|
|
|