Investigations on possibilities to benefits of health application records in dairy goat flocks

Health records of Turkish Saanen Dairy goat flock were used in this study. The animals belong to the experimental farm of Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University. Records keeping occured between 2002 and 2008 years. Health observations were recorded as a individual charts. The records were transferred to the computer and evaluated. One of the aims of this study is the inference of health record keeping and record quality. Each symptom or diagnosis were grouped as disease-disorder groups (infectious, parasitic, traumatic, reproductive, metabolic, respiratory, diarrhoea, abscess, agalactia, leg-foot-claw, eye, udder, skin problems and other general disorders) to standardize and combine application data. Monthly health application sum per animal were calculated concerning systematical factors (year, season, age and sex) of health disorders. High variation was obtained between years and the most health application was achieved in 2004. Infectious problems had higher health application. The means of health application were greater for summer and autumn seasons. In particular, infectious and agalactia problems in summer, respiratory problems in summer and parasitic problems in spring had higher application incidence. Particularly, diarrhoea problems were high in goats, and these problems decreased along with aging. The most health problems were in young goats having 1 month age and application frequency decreased with aging. In bucks, particularly, traumatic problems were highest and these problems occured through leg-foot-claw disorders. The regression coefficients and odds ratios were estimated by GENMOD procedure using GEE model for adult goats and goat kids. It was obtained significant differences among systematical factors (year, season, age). Diarrhoea possibilities for adult goats decraesed with aging, and 6 months -1.5 years old goats exhibited 7.6 times more diarrhoea problem possibility comparision with goats for 3 years and more aging. Estimations of heritability through using linear sire model health application records were h2=0.00-0.09 for all diseases. The highest heritability was estimated for diarrhoea events with h2=0.09 (SE=0.063), and heritability for respiratory problems was h2=0.03 (SE=0.036).