Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine

My research is nutrition and reproduction in peripartum dairy cow.
Main topics are the study on earlier resumption of ovarian activity and uterus involution after calving by enhancing energy and metabolic status during late gestation, and the study on the effect of nutritional status of mother cows on the growth and metabolism of their calves.
During the late gestation, almost mother cows cannot eat enough feed because of growth of fetus. In addition, metabolism of mother cows change from anabolism to catabolism (insulin resistance) for fetal growth and preparation for onset of lactation after calving.
Severe decrease of feed intake and catabolism of mother cows affect to lower growth and metabolism of their calves and the occurrence of several diseases, decrease of milk yield and delayed recovery of reproductive function in mother cows.
Therefore, I detect the metabolic status of good performance cows from blood property, and consider the improvement method for low performance cows.
However, even if I define the characteristics of blood property in good and/or low performance cows, farmer cannot use this indexes on farm.
Thus, I also think some indexes that can be judged on farm, such as rumen condition (see Fig3) and rumen fill score.

• Relationship between metabolic status during the peripartum period and recovery of reproductive function after calving in dairy cows.
• Effect of feed supplementation on metabolic status and reproductive function in dairy cows.
• Study of fetal nutritional status (nutritional status in mother cattle) related to metabolic characteristics after birth.
• Relationship between metabolic characteristics during calf period and performance in mature.
• Relationship between growth of calf and ovarian function during pre- and post-puberty.