Transportation, Adaptive and Productive Performance of Transported Buffalo Herd in New Environment

Abstract

The study was carried out in El-Nobarya Station, Beheira Governorate and El-Nataf El-Kadeem Station, Kafr El-SheikhGovernorate. Twenty-two buffalo cows were included in the experiment. Animals were transported\d to El-Nobarya station to establish abuffalo herd in this station.The experiment included two stages, the first stage aimed to study the effect of transportation and the secondstage aimed to study the effect of acclimatization in El-Nobarya station. Meteorological data were collected and recorded including airtemperature (AT, °C), relative humidity (RH, %) and wind speed (WS, Km/hr.), from which temperature humidity index (THI) wascalculated. The following physiological and hematological parameters were recorded: rectal temperature (RT, °C), respiration rate (RR,r/min), hemoglobin (Hb, g/dl), hematocrit value (Ht, %) and differential counts of leukocyte types; Neutrophils (Ne), Lymphocytes (Ly),Eosinophils (Eo), Monocytes (Mo) and Basophils (Ba). Meanwhile productive traits included dam weight at calving (DW, KG), birthweight of calves (BW, Kg), weaning weight of calves (WW, KG), calving interval period (CI, day), lactation period (LP, day), total milkyield (TMY, Kg) and persistency (PE, %).The present work was conducted to compare between physiological and productiveperformance of buffaloes before and after transportation. The main obtained results are: the decrease in THI and increase in WS were themain meteorological factors affecting physiological performance for animals. The high difference between animal body temperature andhouse temperature in El-Nobarya had been ameliorated by the effect of low THI and high WS. Transportation influenced significantlyphysiological (RR and RT) and hematological parameters. It increased significantly RR, RT, Ne and Mo and decreased significantly Ht,Hb, Ly and Eo after sustainability of animals. However, productive traits of the first season after transportation was better than beforetransportation except TMY due to better managerial and environmental conditions. Buffaloes can acclimatized to transportation stressduring the first season as no significant differences were found between physiological and productive traits between the four season aftertransportation except milk yield and milk curve persistency which require three seasons to come back to pre-transportation levels. Itcould be concluded that buffaloes under conditions in El-Nobarya were better than those in El-Nataf El-Kadeem due to betterenvironmental conditions (lower THI and higher WS) and management.