Reproductive performance of crossbred dairy cattle under semi-intensive management system in Arsi highland, Ethiopia

Dairy cattle genetic improvement mainly focuses on improving reproductive performances. The improvement of dairy cattle reproductive performance increasesthe number of calves per year, decreases calving interval, and reduces the number of services per conception. The low reproductive performance of local cattle rapidly improved through crossbreeding with exotic dairy breed sires. Therefore, this research was designed to estimate the reproductive performance of crossbred dairy cattle and determine factors that influence reproductive trait performance. The reproductive performance of crossbred dairy cattle has been analyzed using farm recorded data. The AFC of crossbred dairy cows was 57.1 months, and the irth year. CI and DO of crossbred dairy cows were 422.2 and 131.4 days respectively, and the traits show a significantdifference (P<0.001) among birth year and parity. Calving year and calving seasons had a significant effect (P<0.05) on the two traits. Birth season and genotype did not show significant effect on the was found 1.5 and all the variables did not show a significant difference in the trait. The least-square mean of the traits shows a significant improvement trend across the different birth years. The higher performance record and the irregularity of the performance across birth year, and the insignificant effect of the different genotypes might be due to management and absence of selective breeding.