Evaluation of the accuracy of an electronic on-farm test to quantify blood β-hydroxybutyrate concentration in dairy goats

The objective of this cross-sectional study was to validate the accuracy of a hand-held electronic on-farm test (Precision Xtra) for quantifying the blood beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHBA) concentration in dairy goats. A total of 114 dairy goats from 3 commercial herds were sampled once for blood in the jugular vein between 1 mo before and 2 mo after parturition. Blood samples were centrifuged to harvest serum and sera were sent to the Animal Health Laboratory of the Universite de Montreal for quantification of BHBA concentration (gold standard). Laboratory BHBA values were between 0.1 and 3.7 mmol/L. Precision Xtra values were compared with gold standard values; Pearson correlation coefficient was 0.98 and coefficient of determination was 0.95. Overall, these results suggested that Precision Xtra provides excellent accuracy for measuring blood BHBA concentration in dairy goats compared with the gold standard test.