Preventing Risk of Metabolic Disorders During Transition Period
Prerna Yadav1, Reenu Tanwar1
1Ph.D scholar, Department of veterinary medicine, P.G.I.V.E.R, Jaipur
1Ph.D scholar, Department of animal nutrition, P.G.I.V.E.R, Jaipur
High producing dairy cows during the lactation period is always at risk of metabolic problems. The transition phase is a crucial and challenging phase in the life of a dairy cow and the farmer this phase ranges between 3 weeks before to 3 weeks after delivery of a newborn. Just after parturition, various physiological, nutritional, and metabolic changes in dairy cows to fulfill the demand of production. Negative energy balance in high producing dairy cows arises as a result of a decrease intake of dry matter up to 10 to 30%. During the transition phase, the animal switches to lactating phase from the non-lactating one, and a reduction in feed intake, and hormonal and dietary changes occur. These all changes in dairy cows may result in various metabolic disorders and the common metabolic problems in large ruminants are ketosis, milk fever, fatty liver, and downer cow syndrome, etc. Clinical metabolic disorders have a high incidence as compared to clinical disorders. The various sub-clinical metabolic disorders include ketosis, liver lipidosis, hypocalcemia, hypomagnesemia, hypophosphatemia, lactiacedemia, copper and zinc deficiency, abomasal displacement, retained placenta and laminitis, etc.
To prevent these metabolic disorders management strategies could be started before calving as nutrients consumed before calving directly or indirectly relates to the metabolic and reproductive disorders. Switching to a concentrated diet from a roughage diet is a major problem after calving. To overcome this problem, a concentrate and lactating diet should be started 3-4 weeks before calving, so that ruminal flora get easily adapt to this type of ration following partition. To reduce excessive carbohydrate fermentation due to feeding of lactating diet, admixing of buffering or alkalizing agents(sodium bicarbonate and magnesium oxide) should be done in ration to reduce the risk of acidosis. To reduce the decrease in ruminal pH and maintain it up to 6.0, 19% of nutrient detergent fiber should be added to forage while rationing formulation, as it stimulates more saliva to balance the pH of the rumen.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4693199/
