Rumination time as an early predictor of metritis and subclinical ketosis in dairy cows at the beginning of lactation: Systematic review-meta-analysis

Daily rumination time (RT; min/d) is recognized as an important tool for assessing the health of dairy cows, which may depend on the disease, lactation stage and individual cows. Using a systematic review-meta-analysis, this study evaluated whether the variation in RT is effective for early detection of metritis and subclinical ketosis (SCK) in dairy cows in the pre and post-partum periods (from three weeks before to three weeks after calving). The research was carried out in four electronic databases - Scopus, Science Direct, Pubmed and Web of Science. The main inclusion criteria were original research; evaluation of RT in dairy cows; and use of RT for early identification of metritis and/or SCK in post-partum dairy cows. A random effect meta-analysis (MA) was conducted for each disease (metritis and SCK) separately, with the RT means of healthy and sick groups, measured in the pre and post-partum. The effect size used was the mean difference (MD).Twenty-two trials from six studies were included in the MA, involving 1494 dairy cows. For metritis, four trials from three studies in the pre-partum period were considered as well as five trials from four studies in the post-partum. For SCK, six trials from four studies pre-partum and seven trials from five studies in the post-partum period were taken into consideration. The heterogeneity between studies for metritis was null (I2 = 0%) and low (I2 = 5.7 %) in the pre-partum and in the post-partum, respectively. The MD of RT between healthy cows and those with metritis was different in the pre (MD =0.411 min/d; P < 0.001) and in the post-partum (MD =0.279 min/d; P 0.001). In SCK, heterogeneity was high in the pre (I2 = 69 %) and in the post-partum (I2 = 58.1 %), and the MD of RT was similar between healthy and sick cows (P 0.05). In a meta-regression, RT from primiparous cows showed a lower predicted value for MD (0.48 min. d; P < 0.05) compared to multiparous cows, and the increment in each unit of milk production decreased the predicted MD value by 0.08 min. d (P < 0.001). Our MA demonstrates that RT is a good predictor for early detection of metritis in pre and post-partum; however, it is not an adequate predictor for SCK. Further investigations using more frequent blood sampling and the same threshold values for BHB are required to assess the adequacy of rumination time to predict SCK.

Automated summary

The study evaluated whether rumination time can be used for early detection of diseases in dairy cows, and found that rumination time is an effective predictor for detecting metritis, but not for subclinical ketosis.