Reproductive performance by dairy cows fed supplemental chromium-methionine (Cr-Met) in transition period

Abstract

This study was conducted to study the effect of supplemental chromium on reproductive performance of dairy cows. Thus, forty multiparous Holstein cows (parity 3) were allocated to two treatments and 20 replicates in a completely randomized design. In this study, treatments consisted of: control group, which received no chromium supplementation and treatment group, which received 6 g/day chromium from chromium  methionine. The cows allocated to this experiment from week 3 prior to parturition until 9 weeks thereafter.  Reproduction parameters consisted of: insemination index and numbers of open days, clinical metabolic  disorders which include acidosis, milk fever, retained placenta and displaced abomasums, and also clinical  puerperal complications consisting of: mastitis, endometritis and ovarian cysts were determined. Results  indicate that Cr supplementation significantly causes decrease in the numbers of open days (p < 0.05). Clinical metabolic disorders and clinical puerperal complications were not affected by chromium methionine  supplementation. The results of this experiment showed that chromium methionine supplementation in  multiparous dairy cows diet may improve their reproductive performance in transition period.

Key words: Dairy cow, Chromium methionine, reproductive performance.