Calcium Requirement in Relation to Milk Fever of Dairy Animals

Abstract

The objective of this review paper is to compile recent findings and give an overview of dairy animals’ calcium requirement for milk fever. Dietary imbalance and inadequate management of dairy cow feeding programs can cause a wide range of health problems, termed metabolic disorders. Periparturient hypocalcemia, often known as milk fever, is a metabolic condition that affects dairy cows around the time they give birth. Dairy animals’ calcium requirements are moderate throughout the dry period but skyrocketed when lactation begins at calving. If the cow body fails to respond to the demand immediately the blood calcium concentration falls below a crucial level, causing clinical or subclinical milk fever, because plasma calcium is essential for neurotransmission affected animals will develop muscle weakness. Sometimes cows develop recumbency, and eventually coma and death. Therefore, administering intravenous calcium salt infusion is the best and fastest way to restore normal plasma calcium levels, and the use of different nutritional approaches has a remarkable role in preventing the sharp drop of blood calcium that occurs during parturition and also avoiding economic loss.