Incidence of repeat breeding in varying breeds of buffaloes and cattle in different climatic conditions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Pakistan)

Abstract

Change in climatic factors poses formidable challenge to the livestock sector development in Pakistan. Repeat breeding (RB), defined as adult buffalo and cow’s failure to conceive from more than 3 times regularly spaced AI or natural services in the absence of any detectable reproductive abnormalities, is a costly problem for the dairy sector. An active surveillance was conducted aimed to address the impact of climate change on incidence of RB in different cattle and buffalo breeds in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Pakistan. Through multistage cluster sampling 3 different climatic and geographic clusters were selected. Total of 1167 animals were included in the study. Out of total 586 were cows and 581 were buffaloes. The sampled population was stratified on parity basis into primiparous and multiparous cow’s and buffalo sub-groups. The overall incidence of RB was calculated 27.33%. RB incidence was significantly (P<0.05) higher in buffaloes (33.04%) than in cattle (21.67%). Whereas RB in multiparous (29.28%) were significantly (P<0.05) higher than primiparous (23.71%) cattle and buffaloes. Significant variations in incidence of RB with season were observed. The results also elicit the significant impact of monthly mean temperature, humidity, average annual rainfall, altitude and breed on the incidence of RB. The culling percentage was significantly (P<0.05) higher in repeat breeder buffaloes (77%) than in cattle (23%). In conclusion the result shows that exotic and cross bred cattle breeds were more efficient reproductively than buffaloes and non descriptive breeds of cattle in varying environmental conditions. It was also concluded that RB is a multi-factorial problem that involves a number of intrinsic and extrinsic factors fixed to the animal.