Culling of dairy cows. Part II. Effects of diseases and reproductive performance on culling in Finnish Ayrshire cows

The effects of 15 diseases and reproductive performance on culling were stu died in 39727 Finnish Ayrshire cows that calved in 1993 and were followed u ntil culling or next calving. Survival analysis, using the Cox proportional hazards model, was performed with diseases and pregnancy status as time-de pendent covariates. Parity, calving season and herd were included as covari ates in every model. The effect of the number of inseminations was also stu died. The farmer's knowledge of the cow's pregnancy status had a significant effe ct on culling. It varied according to the stage of lactation a cow was in; the earlier the farmer knew a cow was pregnant, the smaller was the risk of culling. If a cow had not been inseminated at all, her risk of culling was 10 times higher than if she was inseminated once. If a cow was inseminated more than once, she had a slightly lower risk of being culled than a cow i nseminated only once. The effect of parity decreased when pregnancy status and number of inseminations were added to the model, indicating that part o f the parity effect was accounted for by reproductive performance. Includin g diseases in the model with pregnancy status and the number of inseminatio ns did not change the effects of reproductive performance on culling. Mastitis, teat injuries and lameness had the greatest effect on culling (wh ether adjusted for reproductive performance or not), increasing the risk of culling, followed by anestrus, ovarian cysts and milk fever. In general, t he effects of diseases decreased when reproductive performance was also acc ounted for in the model. When pregnancy status was included in the model, t he effects of anestrus and ovarian cysts became slightly more protective, b ut when the number of inseminations was also considered, they became non-si gnificant at the beginning of lactation and they increased the risk of cull ing at the end of lactation. Sensitivity analysis, which was run to evaluate the effects of our censorin g mechanism on the results, indicated that the censoring times (i.e., the t ime of next calving) were not fully independent of the event (culling) time s; the effects of the diseases and pregnancy status at the very end of the lactation changed slightly from the original model. (C) 1999 Elsevier Scien ce B.V. All rights reserved.