Influence of cow temperament and milking speed on herd life, lifetime milk yield and reasons of cow culling.Importance of functional traits, longevity or reproduction traits increases continuously in present dairy cattle breeding. Effects of milking speed and cow temperament on herd life, lifetime milk yield and reasons of culling were estimated. The highest lifetime yield (p<0.01) of milk, fat and protein as well as life span and herd life had calm animals or slow milking cows. However, cows with normal temperament or fast milking had the highest (p<0.01) yield of milk fat and protein per one day of utilization. The main reason of culling were fertility and reproductive disorders (on average 41.2%), but 15.3% cows were culled because of udder diseases. Results suggest highly significant (p<0.01) influence of temperament and milking speed on life span, herd life, lifetime milk yield. Functional traits, longevity or fertility should be parts of breeding programs to balance dairy cattle selection and compensate negative influence of selection only towards milk yield that took place in the past.
The influence of farmers creating an environment for domestic animals and its impact on their behaviour and welfare are recently a major area of research. The animal reaction to human presence depends on the previous experience and their genetic characteristics. Easily handled animals are much more desirable than nervous ones. Temperament is one of the natural traits of an animal influencing, among others, daily body weight gains up to weaning, as well as meat quality when slaughtered. Some of the results based on temperament tests are summarized in the presented paper.