The dairy cow of the future was a topic of discussion at this years British Society of Animal Sciences annual conference in Birmingham. Katie Jones reports.
The dairy cow of the future is likely to be highly productive, much more resistant to disease and inevitably smaller in stature, said Prof Mike Coffey of Scotlands Rural College (SRUC).
Prof Coffey, speaking during a genetics session, also said that the forces which drive change within breeding decisions were also changing.
He said: Historically, market forces have driven breeding decision, but the luxury of those days has gone. The Government and retailers, as spokespeople for the consumer, will now drive that change.
He said the industry was already seeing this and pointed to the requirements around the shooting of bull calves as an example of this.
He said: We will see a lot more enforcement of change in the future, rather than allowing things to change organically.
He said the possibility of reducing the size of dairy cows in the future was well debated and was starting to gain traction as bigger cows made no sense in terms of efficiency and environmental considerations.
However, he added that it was also well discussed that cows in general had been getting bigger in recent times.
However, there are very few records of cow liveweight and, instead if we look at cull cow weights, the data suggests weight is fairly static.
Prof Coffey highlighted the array of tools which were already helping dairy farmers get to where they were in regards to breeding and genetics.
Firstly, he pointed to genomics, which were accelerating progress.
He said: The herds which are genotyping all animals are making much more rapid progress, which are those that are only genotyping a small selection.
And he said the genotypes of the future would do many things for cows of the future. This included parentage checking and discovery.
We will know much more about the dairy cow of the future and we will know where she comes from; she will have provenance.
**NEW STORY
What do we know about teat necrosis?
Digital dermatitis may not be the main cause or contributing factor in on-farm cases of ischaemic teat necrosis, according to research work carried out by Hayley Crosby-Durrani, of the University of Liverpool.
Ms Crosby-Durrani explained her research had been carried out to find out more about this apparently naturally occurring disease, which was first reported in 2004 and anecdotally appears to be becoming more prevalent.
She added that research into the disease was limited, but a previous study had suggested that digital dermatitis treponemes were found in most cattle suffering with teat necrosis. However, this was not the case in her own research.
She said: Only one-third of cases of teat necrosis identified in my research also had evidence of digital dermatitis treponemes. The idea that digital dermatitis is closely linked to teat necrosis needs to be examined further.
However, her research which included a questionnaire about the disease which went out to more than 1,800 farmers and pathological screening of identified cases, suggested that teat necrosis was widespread across GB and first lactation heifers within the 90 days in-milk timeframe were most at risk.
Only 20.9% of cases were reported to recover and 22.8% of cases required rapid culling.
She also said potential farm level risk factors included on-farm cases of udder cleft dermatitis and chapped teats.
