Suchergebnisse

This review constitutes a part of the Core Organic project 'ProYoungStock' – Promoting young stock and cow health and welfare by natural feeding systems. The overarching aim of the project is to improve young stock rearing systems concerning animal welfare-friendly husbandry, feeding and disease prevention by identifying approaches on different levels. More natural rearing systems are one approach to solve welfare problems in current calf rearing. Previous studies have shown considerable variations in herd characteristics and management strategies between organic dairy farms in Europe. The differences have been associated with regional and national conditions for organic farming. However, it is possible that differences in national legislation also play a part in these variations. Relevant EU and national rules on organic production and animal welfare were compiled in the following seven European countries: Sweden (SE), France (FR), Poland (PL), Germany (DE), Italy (IT), Austria (AT), and Switzerland (CH). The purpose was to provide information on drivers and barriers for cow-calf contact systems in organic dairy production and to identify possible areas for improvement and/or harmonization. Our results did not identify any major barriers in national rules for the use of rearing systems allowing cow-calf contact. Instead, cow-calf contact is promoted by the requirement to feed organic calves preferably maternal milk during the first three months of their life. Specifications regarding calf rearing derives from animal protection legislation rather than regulations of organic farming but milk hygiene regulations can also have an influence on practicability of cow-calf contact. Variations in national legislation can affect details of design and implementation of cow-calf systems, however, other factors (e.g. overall conditions for organic dairy farming, traditions, economics and disease prevention strategies) rather than regulations likely play more important roles.

This review constitutes a part of the Core Organic project 'ProYoungStock' – Promoting young stock and cow health and welfare by natural feeding systems. The overarching aim of the project is to improve young stock rearing systems concerning animal welfare-friendly husbandry, feeding and disease prevention by identifying approaches on different levels. More natural rearing systems are one approach to solve welfare problems in current calf rearing. Previous studies have shown considerable variations in herd characteristics and management strategies between organic dairy farms in Europe. The differences have been associated with regional and national conditions for organic farming. However, it is possible that differences in national legislation also play a part in these variations. Relevant EU and national rules on organic production and animal welfare were compiled in the following seven European countries: Sweden (SE), France (FR), Poland (PL), Germany (DE), Italy (IT), Austria (AT), and Switzerland (CH). The purpose was to provide information on drivers and barriers for cow-calf contact systems in organic dairy production and to identify possible areas for improvement and/or harmonization. Our results did not identify any major barriers in national rules for the use of rearing systems allowing cow-calf contact. Instead, cow-calf contact is promoted by the requirement to feed organic calves preferably maternal milk during the first three months of their life. Specifications regarding calf rearing derives from animal protection legislation rather than regulations of organic farming but milk hygiene regulations can also have an influence on practicability of cow-calf contact. Variations in national legislation can affect details of design and implementation of cow-calf systems, however, other factors (e.g. overall conditions for organic dairy farming, traditions, economics and disease prevention strategies) rather than regulations likely play more important roles.

peer-reviewed ; H.D.D., A.J.C., P.J.B. and B.J.H. would like to acknowledge the Dairy Futures Cooperative Research Centre for funding. H.P. and R.F. acknowledge funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the AgroClustEr 'Synbreed—Synergistic Plant and Animal Breeding' (grant 0315527B). H.P., R.F., R.E. and K.-U.G. acknowledge the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Süddeutscher Rinderzüchter, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Österreichischer Fleckviehzüchter and ZuchtData EDV Dienstleistungen for providing genotype data. A. Bagnato acknowledges the European Union (EU) Collaborative Project LowInputBreeds (grant agreement 222623) for providing Brown Swiss genotypes. Braunvieh Schweiz is acknowledged for providing Brown Swiss phenotypes. H.P. and R.F. acknowledge the German Holstein Association (DHV) and the Confederación de Asociaciones de Frisona Española (CONCAFE) for sharing genotype data. H.P. was financially supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (grant PA 2789/1-1). D.B. and D.C.P. acknowledge funding from the Research Stimulus Fund (11/S/112) and Science Foundation Ireland (14/IA/2576). M.S. and F.S.S. acknowledge the Canadian Dairy Network (CDN) for providing the Holstein genotypes. P.S. acknowledges funding from the Genome Canada project entitled 'Whole Genome Selection through Genome Wide Imputation in Beef Cattle' and acknowledges WestGrid and Compute/Calcul Canada for providing computing resources. J.F.T. was supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, under awards 2013-68004-20364 and 2015-67015-23183. A. Bagnato, F.P., M.D. and J.W. acknowledge EU Collaborative Project Quantomics (grant 516 agreement 222664) for providing Brown Swiss and Finnish Ayrshire sequences and genotypes. A.C.B. and R.F.V. acknowledge funding from the public–private partnership 'Breed4Food' (code BO-22.04-011- 001-ASG-LR) and EU FP7 IRSES SEQSEL (grant 317697). A.C.B. and R.F.V. acknowledge CRV (Arnhem, the Netherlands) for providing data on Dutch and New Zealand Holstein and Jersey bulls. ; Stature is affected by many polymorphisms of small effect in humans1. In contrast, variation in dogs, even within breeds, has been suggested to be largely due to variants in a small number of genes2,3. Here we use data from cattle to compare the genetic architecture of stature to those in humans and dogs. We conducted a meta-analysis for stature using 58,265 cattle from 17 populations with 25.4 million imputed whole-genome sequence variants. Results showed that the genetic architecture of stature in cattle is similar to that in humans, as the lead variants in 163 significantly associated genomic regions (P < 5 × 10−8) explained at most 13.8% of the phenotypic variance. Most of these variants were noncoding, including variants that were also expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) and in ChIP–seq peaks. There was significant overlap in loci for stature with humans and dogs, suggesting that a set of common genes regulates body size in mammals.