ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION IN FARM ANIMALS - Phenix-Vet

160Artificial Insemination in Farm Animalsongoing maintenance of pregnancy, 6. lactation, 7. extra reserves of energy, 8. estrouscyclicity, ovulation and early pregnancy, and 9. excess reserves. Therefore, the reproductivefunctions, in terms of partition of nutrients, are not priorities for the animal economy(Wright & Russel, 1984).Knowledge of body condition score herd contributes to decisions on measures of impact onproduction and costs of livestock development. In fact, you can set times to wean the calvesor to define when and how to supplement the diet of breeders, aiming to reduce the periodof postpartum anestrus (Moraes et al., 2007). Furthermore, knowing the body conditionscore is useful even in the prediction of productive performance (Short et al., 1996) andreproductive performance (Dunn & Moss, 1992).The score is obtained by the visual and tactile (palpation) of the animal by a trainedprofessional. There are scores of different scales, which vary in concept, the topology of thepoints of observation and animal species for which they are applied. The notes are given toanimals in accordance with the amount of tissue reserves, especially fat and muscle incertain areas of the body, often associated with specific anatomic landmarks, such as certainbony protrusions, ribs, spinous processes of the spine, processes transverse spine, flank, tipof the ileum, above the tail, sacrum and lumbar vertebrae. Extreme scores 1 and 5 (obese andcachectic) are undesirable in any scale and in any animal species studied (figure 2).The monitoring of changes in the body condition score and body weight providesinformation on the reproductive potential of the cows (Dunn & Moss, 1992), which isScore 1Score 2