Reproductive disorders in dairy cattle. II. Interrelationships between pre-or post-service infectious and functional disorders.

This retrospective study was aimed at investigating the interrelationships between the various post-partum reproductive disorders whose incidence distribution was reported in a previous paper. There were 343 calving cows, and 319 of them were inseminated at least once. Although approximately one-third of the cows suffered from metritis, its influence on subsequent pathology was only minor. No within-animal relationship could be found between post-partum cyclic anestrus and post-AI anestrus. The distribution of repeat breeding cows showed that almost half of them also had post-AI anestrus, and only 17% had no other disorders. Previous metritis accounted for only 10% of these cases. Embryonic mortality was related only to post-partum cyclic anestrus. Finally, it was found that approximately half of the cows suffered from more than one reproductive disorder with many different relations between the disorders within individuals during post partum. In conclusion, optimal efficiency of post-partum reproduction requires careful checking of all possible disorders.