AUTHOR=Buonaiuto Giovanni , Lopez-Villalobos Nicolas , Costa Angela , Niero Giovanni , Degano Lorenzo , Mammi Ludovica Maria Eugenia , Cavallini Damiano , Palmonari Alberto , Formigoni Andrea , Visentin Giulio TITLE=Stayability in Simmental cattle as affected by muscularity and body condition score between calvings JOURNAL=Frontiers in Veterinary Science VOLUME=10 YEAR=2023 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/articles/10.3389/fvets.2023.1141286 DOI=10.3389/fvets.2023.1141286 ISSN=2297-1769 ABSTRACT=
The present study aimed to investigate the association between stayability (STAY) traits, muscularity, and body condition score (BCS) in the Italian Simmental dual-purpose cows. Data were collected from 2,656 cows linearly scored in their first lactation from 2002 to 2020 and reared in 324 herds. The binary trait STAY, which is the ability of a cow to stay in the herd, was obtained for each cow-lactation available up to parity 5 (from STAY1-2 to STAY4-5). Analysis of STAY was carried out using logistic regression, considering the fixed effect of energy corrected milk, conception rate, somatic cell score, and muscularity or BCS predicted at different time points. The herd of linear classification and residual error were the random effects. Primiparous cows with a medium BCS and muscularity in early lactation presented a more favorable STAY across life compared to thinner ones (