The burden of disease and syndromes in preweaning dairy calves at the farm level: Estimation based on the disability-adjusted life years (DALY) approach
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The main objective of this study was to estimate the burden of frequent diseases and syndromes in preweaning dairy calves at the farm level using the disability-adjusted life years (DALY) approach. The secondary objective was to evaluate the association between the DALY and inadequate transfer of passive immunity (ITPI). A total of 1,908 male and female calves from 40 farms were examined between February 2022 and August 2023, across 5 visits. A health protocol was used to record frequent diseases and syndromes. Producers were followed up via text messages every 15 to 60 d after visiting the farm to collect information on calf mortality. The DALY were obtained by summing the years of life lived with disability (YLD) and the years of life lost (YLL). The previously reported disability weights for frequent diseases and syndromes were multiplied by their prevalence in the selected farms to obtain the YLD. The number of deaths was multiplied by the life expectancy of a calf in the preweaning period to obtain the YLL. The YLD and YLL were adjusted for 10 calves or calvings, respectively. The highest prevalence of disease and syndromes at the farm level was reported for diarrhea (28.6%; range: 2.8-46.4), whereas the leading cause of calf death was dystocia (33.8%, 22/65). A median of 2.03 YLD/10 calves (range 0.53-4.27) was estimated for all 40 dairy farms. For those farms that reported mortality data (n = 30), a median of 1.46 YLL/10 calvings (range: 0-8.51) and 3.37 DALY/10 calves-calvings (range: 0.53-11.43) per herd were observed. The main causes of health losses related to YLD were diarrhea (1.46; range: 0.14-2.4) and respiratory disease (0.42; range: 0-1.66). The median number of YLL per herd was 0 for all causes of death. For preweaning dairy calves meant for dairy replacement, a median of 2.13 YLD/10 calves (range: 0.28-4.38) was observed. Nonreplacement dairy calves had a median of 2.40 YLD/10 calves (range: 0.39-5.63). In general, ITPI was significantly associated with YLL (Spearman's r = 0.43) and DALY (Spearman's r = 0.41). A significant association was observed between ITPI and YLD (Spearman's r = 0.32) for replacement dairy calves. No significant association was observed between the prevalences of ITPI and YLD overall and for nonreplacement dairy calves. The DALY showed a viable approach to combining information on morbidity (including different diseases) and mortality in a common metric for dairy calves. The DALY could help producers and veterinarians in the identification of health priorities for preweaning dairy calves.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".