What to Do About Cattle Pregnancy? Key Points for Feeding and Management of Cows During Pregnancy

Cattle in pregnancy have relatively poor immunity and resistance, so during breeding you must pay attention to observing the cattle's mental state and learn some breeding techniques and disease prevention methods; only then will raising dairy cows in pregnancy avoid illness and economic losses.

1. Strengthen feeding management. The daily ration should be balanced and the feed varied, and the daily ration should be adjusted promptly according to changes in physiological traits. When energy and protein feed are supplied reasonably, full attention should be paid to the supply of mineral feeds calcium, phosphorus, manganese, zinc, iron and vitamins A, D, E; do not feed moldy or spoiled feed; do not shout at, hit or chase the cattle; when treating pregnant cattle, medication should be used with caution, and laxatives and estrus-inducing drugs should not be used indiscriminately.

2. If clinical miscarriage has already occurred, the cause should be identified. Each cow that miscarries should be fed separately, and the aborted fetus and fetal membranes should be carefully examined to observe whether the fetus has deformities and whether the placenta has edema or necrosis. To confirm the nature of the disease, the cow's blood, uterine secretions, the fetal abomasum and its contents, liver and spleen can be collected for microbiological examination; check whether the cow has a systemic disease and learn about the feeding and management situation. Aborted fetuses, afterbirth and bedding straw should be deeply buried or burned.

3. Vaccine injection. To prevent miscarriage caused by infectious diseases, the following should be done: calves aged 5-6 months should be vaccinated with swine brucellosis strain 2 or sheep brucellosis strain 5 vaccine. Adult cows should undergo the brucellosis tube agglutination test once to twice a year, and positive cows should be isolated; as the herd expands and the frequency of introducing outside cattle increases, some new infectious diseases of dairy cows, such as infectious bovine rhinotracheitis and bovine viral diarrhea disease, are also gradually spreading, so vaccination should be considered.

Pregnancy interruption is a common pregnancy-period disease on dairy farms, and the harm it causes lies not only in fetal death and a decline in calving rate, but more importantly in disrupting the normal calving time, prolonging the open days and calving interval, and directly affecting the milk yield of this parity and the lifetime milk yield. Therefore, preventing miscarriage in dairy cows is important work in dairy production.