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The winter cold stress of dairy cows has become one of the important problems affecting the healthy development of animal husbandry. Cold stress will lead to the decrease of feed intake, milk yield and reproductive performance of dairy cows, and seriously harm the economic benefits of dairy farmers. Inner Mongolia is located in a cold region, where animals are in a cold environment for a long time, and the impact of cold stress is more common. In order to more specifically understand the effects of cold stress on the production performance of dairy cows, the paper reviews the effects of cold stress on the behavior, milk yield, neuroendocrine, biochemical indexes, immune, antioxidant function, intestinal flora and other aspects of dairy cows, and summarizes the effective prevention and control measures to prevent cold stress of dairy cows, to provide reference for further research on the prevention and relief of cold stress in dairy cows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to study the effects of early weaning on the organ development and apparent digestibility of nutrients in lambs. A total of 36 crossbred healthy lambs (half male and half female) with a similar weight (9.5±1.2) kg and age (25.0±1.5) d were selected for rearing experiments, and randomly divided into 3 groups, namely control group, group Ⅰ, and group Ⅱ, each group of 12 sheep, divided into 3 replicates. The control group naturally lactated, group Ⅰ and Ⅱ group were fed milk substitutes A and B respectively. The lambs in the experimental group were pre-weaned at 25 days of age and completely weaned at 30 days of age, and fed with milk substitutes. At 90 days of age, two healthy lambs with a weight close to the average weight were selected for each replicate, and one was slaughtered and one was digested. The results showed that the difference in slaughter rate between the experimental group and the control group was not significant (P>0.05). Rumen, wrinkled stomach, small intestine fresh weight, lung, pancreas, spleen weight of control group were lower than experimental group, and the differences between group Ⅰ and control group were significant (P<0.05). Compared with the control group, the apparent digestibility of dry matter, organic matter and crude protein of group Ⅰ and group Ⅱ were not significantly different (P>0.05). The apparent digestibility of crude fat in the control group was significantly higher than that in the experimental group (P<0.05). It indicats that weaning feeding milk substitute at 30 days of age can help the organ development of lamb and will not have a significant effect on the digestibility of nutrients. The feeding effect of milk substitute A and B in this experiment was good, and it could be adjusted and utilized when the protein raw material soybean meal was in short supply and high price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern dairy industry has an urgent need to promote a sustainable development strategy in China. Among them, precision dairy technology can be one of the most important ways to realize the modern dairy industry. Farm management can be transformed from the group to the individual for high efficiency and production level. However, the current adoption of precision dairy technology was still lacking so far. Most research was focused on the influencing factors of technology application and development. Only a few explored the current adoption of precision dairy technology. This study aims to investigate the adoption behavior of precision dairy technology by dairy farmers. The research areas were selected as the dairy-producing bases in North China (Hebei Province, Henan Province, Shandong Province, and Shanxi Province). 345 valid samples were firstly collected for the latter use. A binary Logit regression was then used to construct the theoretical framework for the farmers' adoption of precision dairy technology, according to the farmers' behavior and innovation diffusion theory. The results showed that: 1) The adoption rates of automatic cup stripping, identification, milk recording, and estrus monitoring technology by dairy farmers were 64.9%, 57.7%, 56.2%, and 37.7%, respectively. 2) The non-adoption of new technologies was ever more costly for dairy farmers, particularly for the unaffordable investment in the early stage of technology. 3) All technology popularization levels, breeding scales, and average daily milk production presented a significant positive correlation on the adoption of four technologies. By contrast, there was a significant correlation with the other factors on the adoption of at least two technologies. Among the four technologies, the automatic cup stripping technology was the least affected by the breeding scale, policy subsidies, and technical training. The automatic identification technology was the most affected by the satisfaction of breeding income and education level. The automatic milk recording technology was the most affected by the average daily milk production, and policy subsidies without technical training. The automatic estrus monitoring technology was the least affected by the education level and average daily milk production without the policy subsidies, particularly the most influence from the breeding scale and technical training. Therefore, it is recommended to implement the different promotion measures for the four technologies. Specifically, the automatic cup stripping technology can be focused on small-scale farms, due to the least influence from the farming scale. The automatic estrus monitoring technology can be focused on large-scale breeding farms, technical popularization, and training for the strong skills of data management for the dairy farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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