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In the United States, it is becoming common for dairy herds to mate a portion of cows to beef semen to create a value-added calf. The objectives of this study were to determine if dystocia risk, stillbirth (SB) risk, gestation length (GL), probability of early-lactation clinical disease events, early-lactation culling risk, or subsequent milk production differ between cows that carried calves sired by different beef breeds and those that carried Holstein-sired calves. Records from 10 herds contained 75,256 lactations from 39,249 cows that had calves with known Holstein or beef breed sires from the years 2010 to 2023. Calf sire breeds with ≥150 records included in analyses were Holstein, Angus, Simmental, Limousin, crossbred beef, and Charolais. Additional beef sire breeds that existed in lower frequency (n < 150 records) were condensed together and classified as "other." Because GL is a continuous variable, sire breed inclusion criteria were reduced to n ≥ 100 records; thus, Wagyu sires were included as their own breed group. Some records did not contain all variables of interest, thus models included fewer lactations depending on variable. Binomial generalized mixed models evaluated dystocia risk (defined as calving ease score ≥4 or calving ease score ≥3), SB risk, clinical health event risk (defined as lameness, mastitis, metabolic, reproductive, other, or any health events occurring within 60 d in milk [DIM]), and early culling risk (defined as death or culling within 60 DIM). Gestation length and test-date milk, fat, and protein yields were evaluated with mixed models. Calves sired by crossbred beef bulls had a greater probability of being stillborn (5%; 95% confidence interval lower = 2.9% upper = 9.0%) than those sired by Holstein bulls (2%; 95% confidence interval lower = 1.5%, upper = 2.7%). All beef-sired calves increased GL from that of Holstein-sired calves (277 ± 0.15 d) with Limousin (282 ± 0.81 d) and Wagyu-sired calves (285 d ± 0.79) resulting in the longest GL. The risk of dystocia, clinical health events, and early-lactation culling did not differ by calf sire breed nor did subsequent milk and component yield. Generally, carrying a calf sired by the beef breeds included in this study did not negatively affect the dairy cow., (The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of the American Dairy Science Association®. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).)

The processing of milk using high-pressure technologies has been shown to dissociate casein micelles, denature whey proteins, and change the appearance and rheological properties of milk. A novel high-pressure processing technology called high-pressure-jet (HPJ) processing is currently being investigated for use in the food industry. Few studies have evaluated the effects of HPJ technology on dairy foods. The present study investigated the physicochemical and foaming properties of homogenized pasteurized whole milk processed at pressures from 0 to 500 MPa using HPJ processing. The apparent particle size exhibited a monomodal distribution in whole milk samples processed up to 125 MPa and a bimodal distribution for samples processed at 250, 375, and 500 MPa. The viscosity increased from approximately 2 to 5 mPa·s when whole milk was processed using HPJ at 375 MPa, and foam expansion increased from approximately 80 to 140% after processing at >125 MPa. Foam stability was limited to pressures in the 375 to 500 MPa range. We hypothesized that the increase in apparent particle size was due to the dissociation of casein micelles into surface-active casein protein monomers, and the formation of casein-casein and casein-fat particles. Ultracentrifugation of samples into 3 milk fractions (supernatant, serum, and precipitate), and subsequent fat and protein analysis on the 3 fractions, showed that a strong interaction between casein proteins and fat triglycerides occurred, evidenced by the increase in fat content associated with the precipitate fraction with increasing pressure. This suggests that stable casein-fat aggregates are formed when whole milk is processed using HPJ at pressure >125 MPa., (Copyright © 2018 American Dairy Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)