Most frequent bovine diseases in cattle herds in the West-Transdanubian Region

The political and economical changes in 1989 and 90 influenced Hungary’s agriculture greatly. The transition hit the branches of animal husbandry more than plant growing. Cattle husbandry is one of the most important branches of agriculture in Hungary. Its production is equally important both for the domestic and for export markets. Under the present market conditions Hungary will only be able to maintain its cattle stock if the profitability and competitiveness of the branch can be enhanced considering the requirements of the European Union. Therefore the hidden causes of economic losses should be revealed and solutions have to be found in order to eliminate them. It is only possible if data on the health state of the herds are available. Several factors influence the profitability of running a dairy farm. Some of them cannot be influenced at all or little but there are a few factors, which can be changed considerably. Mastitis, fertility problems and metabolic diseases, lameness and several other infectious diseases like bovine virus diarrhoea (BVD) and infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR) cause great losses in dairy herds in Hungary. They also cause high losses in countries with developed cattle breeding. In our study we wanted to answer the questions: ”What are the most frequent stock health problems on cattle farms in the West-Transdanubian region?” and ”How high is the rate of cows culled because of diseases?” We summarised and evaluated the data from questionnaires about the spread of the following diseases on 30 cattle farms: foot diseases, placenta retention and metritis, clinical and sub-clinical mastitis. Among them sub-clinical mastitis came highest (13.1%) followed by placenta retention (12.4%), metritis (9.6%) and clinical mastitis (9.5%). Culling owing to diseases reached 20.1% on average during the period of the investigation.