LONGEVITY AND MILK PRODUCTION ECONOMICS IN ROMANIAN BLACK AND WHITE COWS REARED IN THE SOUTH-WESTERN ROMANIA

A. Bognar, L.T. Cziszter, S. Acatincăi, I. Tripon, D. Gavojdian, Simona Baul, Silvia Erina

Abstract
The aim of the paper was to quantify the longevity and milk production economics of a Romanian Black and White cow population from Timis (TM) and Caras-Severin (CS) counties. A number of 625 cows from TM and 62 cows from CS that finished their productive life by 01.01.2007 were studied. Life length, from birth to cull, was 6 years 11 months and 10 days in TM, being by 2 years and 26 days shorter than in CS (9 years and 6 days, p<0.001). Exploitation length, from first calving to cull, was 4 years 1 month and 11 day in TM and 3 years 8 months and 15 days in CS. Exploitation index, exploitation length and life length ratio, was 0.58 in TM and 0.42 in CS (p<0.001), at an equal number of lactations of 3.09 and 3.03, respectively. At a similar number of days of lactation per life, of 1075.43 and 1048.03 days, respectively (p>0.05), cows from TM produced a higher milk yield than cows in CS (16461.1 kg vs. 14173.29 kg, p<0.05). Milk yield per day of life and per day of lactation were significantly higher (p<0.001) in TM than in CS (6.35 kg and 15.07 kg vs. 4.42 kg and 13.65 kg, respectively). Per day of exploitation, the milk yield produced by cows from the two counties was similar (10.94 kg vs. 10.71 kg, p>0.05). In conclusion, the milk production economics was higher in cows from TM than for cows from CS.

Key words: longevity, economics, dairy cows, milk, Romanian Black and White