The analysis of factors affecting the calving difficulty in Slovak Spotted cattle

Abstract

Article Details: Received: 2018-09-10 | Accepted: 2018-10-25 | Available online: 2018-09-31

https://doi.org/10.15414/afz.2018.21.03.119-124

The aim of this study was to analyse several genetic and non-genetic factors that can affect the calving difficulty of Slovak Spotted cattle and to find out their statistical significance. A total of 417030 calving difficulty records from 174795 dams were collected during the calving parity from 2001 to 2017. The impact of factors affecting the calving difficulty was analysed by using procGLM implemented in SAS 9.3 on the basis of multifactor analysis of variance. The effects of the herd, a year of calving, the sex of a calf, a breed type, a month of calving, the parity and the sire were tested. The sex of born calf was the most statistically significant factor (R2 =25,5 %). The calving difficulty was significantly affected also by the herd, a year of calving, a month of calving, the parity and sire. Each of these effects showed high level of significance (P<0.001). The lowest level of statistical significance was found for effect of breed type. Based on obtained results we recommend continuing to use the recording of calving difficulty for the purposes of evaluation of effect of sire on inheritance.

Keywords: cattle, calving difficulty, non-genetic factors, reproduction

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