Reproductive performance of crossbred dairy cattle under semiintensive management system in Arsi highland, Ethiopia

Abstract

Dairy cattle genetic improvement mainly focuses on improving reproductive
performances. The improvement of dairy cattle reproductive performance
increasesthe number of calves per year, decreases calving interval, and
reduces the number of services per conception. The low reproductive
performance of local cattle rapidly improved through crossbreeding with
exotic dairy breed sires. Therefore, this research was designed to estimate
the reproductive performance of crossbred dairy cattle and determine
factors that influence reproductive trait performance. The reproductive
performance of crossbred dairy cattle has been analyzed using farm
recorded data. The AFC of crossbred dairy cows was 57.1 months, and the
irth year. CI and
DO of crossbred dairy cows were 422.2 and 131.4 days respectively, and the
traits show a significantdifference (P<0.001) among birth year and parity.
Calving year and calving seasons had a significant effect (P<0.05) on the
two traits. Birth season and genotype did not show significant effect on the
was found 1.5 and all the variables did not show a significant difference in
the trait. The least-square mean of the traits shows a significant
improvement trend across the different birth years. The higher performance
record and the irregularity of the performance across birth year, and the
insignificant effect of the different genotypes might be due to management
and absence of selective breeding.