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Effects of Parity Order on Production and Body Measurements¹

Department of Dairy Science, University of Illinois, Urbana

ABSTRACT

The first four lactations of 244 cows and body measurements of 275 cows were analyzed to estimate the effects of parity of birth on production and size. The effects of parity of birth on milk yield, fat per cent, milk fat yield, body weight, wither height, body length, and heart girth are not significantly different from zero. The practice of eliminating first-parity animals because they are deemed inferior is not substantiated. For general body size a nonparametric Chi-square test indicated that second-parity animals were consistently larger than the population mean, fourth-parity animals consistently smaller than the population mean, and first- and third-parity animals near the population mean.

¹ Data for this study came from the dairy cattle crossbreeding project, a cooperative undertaking between the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station and the Dairy Cattle Research Branch AHRD, ARS, USDA. This is a contributing project to the North Central Regional Project NC-2, Improvement of Dairy Cattle Through Breeding.