Health treatment costs of pure Holsteins in 8 high-performance Minnesota dairies

Abstract Text:

Health treatment costs of pure Holstein cows (n=4,997) were evaluated in 8 high-performance dairy herds in Minnesota.  Cows calved from March 2008 to September 2015, and 17 types of health treatments were defined uniformly across herds.  The cost for treatment of retained placenta, metritis, cystic ovary, miscellaneous reproduction, ketosis, displaced abomasum, milk fever, lameness, mastitis, digestive, respiratory, injury, California Mastitis Test/milk culture, and other treatments were summed within 6 stages of lactation for parities 1 to 5. Excluded from analysis were hoof trimming, palpation, and reproductive aid.  The 6 stages of lactation were defined based on days in milk.  The first 4 stages were 60 days each, stage 5 started on day 241 and was variable in length and continued until the dry date, and stage 6 included the dry period only.  Treatment costs were the mean cost of treatment protocols defined by the veterinarians used by the herds in addition to a fixed labor cost of $18/hour reported by producers.  Labor costs were applied based on time per treatment from a producer survey.  Cows were grouped into two year-blocks of calving and year-blocks were defined as 2008 to 2010 and 2011 to 2015.  Statistical analyses were conducted separately for each parity, and independent variables were the fixed effects of herd, year-block of calving, interaction of herd and year-block, stage of lactation, and interaction of stage of lactation and year-block.  Year-blocks were combined for parities 3 to 5 because cows left the herds as they aged.  For this reason, only the fixed effects of herd and stage of lactation were considered for parities 3 to 5.  For all 5 parities, herd and stage of lactation were highly significant (P < 0.01).  For parities 1 and 2, year-block and its interactions were highly significant (P < 0.01).  As expected, treatment costs were largest during the first 60 days in milk, which is usually when cows experience high treatment costs for transition disorders.  Least squares means of treatment costs (Table 1) for parities 1 and 2 decreased as year-block increased for most stages of lactation.  The most dramatic decrease in treatment cost by year-block occurred within the first 60 days in milk, perhaps indicating an improvement in transition cow management amongst the herds during the years of the study.  

Keywords: treatment costs, management, health