Productive life in buffalo cows and effect of some factors on it

Abstract

Subject of investigation were 3989 buffaloes from the Bulgarian Murrah breed during the period 1976 - 2003. The productive life (PL) is determined as the period between date of first calving to the date of last milking, before culling. LS-analysis was used to test the effects of milk yield at first lactation (MYFL), farm (F) and age of the first calving (AFC) on it. It has been established that the average duration of productive life is 1451+ 41.2 days. Productive life is determined to a great extent by the milk yield at first lactation. For the lowest productive buffaloes (under 1200 kg) it was 1028 days and 1769 days for the highest productive buffaloes (over 2700 kg). The farm significantly influences the productive life. Not so significant is the influence of the age at first calving on productive life of buffaloes. The longest PL (1618 days) have had buffaloes with AFC up to 29 months and shortest (1171 days) those calved over 50 months.