УДК 636
Authors:
Ekaterina Skvortsova
Ural State Agrarian University. 620075 Russian Federation, Ekaterinburg, st. Karl Liebknecht, 42.
E-mail:
The economic value of a pregnancy is influenced by the stage of pregnancy, stage of lactation, number of lactations, milk yield, price of milk, cost of a replacement heifer, probability of pregnancy, and probability of culling. The value of a new pregnancy increases with the number of days in lactation, but usually decreases in the later period [De Vries A. 2006]. Relatively highly productive cows and first-calf heifers achieve higher performance. The cost of pregnancy loss usually increases with the duration of pregnancy. The increased likelihood of pregnancy, increased milk yield stability and lower heifer replacement costs significantly reduce the average pregnancy value. The value of a new pregnancy is negative for relatively high-yielding first-calf heifers when the duration of lactation and the stage of pregnancy increase. Changes in milk prices, absolute milk yield and culling probability have less of an impact on pregnancy value. The value of pregnancy for individual cows was largely dependent on the predicted daily milk yield for the remainder of the lactation period.
Keywords: pregnancy, efficiency of milk production, economics of pregnancy, cattle
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