Energy deficiency in dairy farms, a problem – farmers and stakeholders perceptions

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Pénasse, Y. | Devriendt, N. | Gotti, V. | Le Cozler, Yannick | Gelé, M. | Jurquet, J. | Guinard-Flament, Jocelyne

Edité par CCSD ; Wageningen Academic Publishers -

Energy deficiency (ED) is known to have many origins on farms (beginning of lactation, climatic conditions…)and to impact dairy cows’ performances. If some indicators regarding ED have been highlighted in the past, theiron-farm use remains unclear and possible use of other indicators or demands on new expectations from both farmers and stakeholders are unknown. Students involved in animal sciences at Agrocampus Ouest (France) led two semi-quantitative surveys in order to collect such information. Stakeholders (vets, specialists in nutrition…; n=14) were exclusively selected from existing network, while farmers (n=67) were selected either from existing networks (n=32) or randomly (n=35). Farmers’ surveys were completed by phone (n=42) or on-farm (n=25). The surveyed holdings were 33 to 320-ha wide, organic (n=13) or not and mainly from western part of France (n=52), the most significant area of dairy farms in the country. 8/67 of farmers were unable to define ED but all knew how to handle this problem when occurring. For both stakeholders and farmers, the sensitive periods were early lactation (33/81) and summer season (32/81). Farmers also included dietary transitions in the sensitive periods (22/67). Almost half of them regularly experienced energy deficiency on their farm (38/67). The most-cited indicator was the change in milk composition (64% of both stakeholders and farmers); the second was body condition score (BCS) (31% of them). Farmers seem to rely more on visual indicators, such as BCS (44/67), coat appearance (7/67) and lameness (4/67), whereas stakeholders prefer to use technical indicators, such as protein (11/14) and fat (4/14) content of milk. Most of them don’t need any additional indicator or tool to follow the energy deficiency (33/81) but they would appreciate to have a more sensitive daily indicator (18/81).

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