Assessment of biosecurity status in dairy cow farms

Abstract

Out of 125 biosecurity practices considered to evaluate the overall biosecurity status of dairy farms, the scores ranged from 34 to 75. The overall percentage of the biosecurity score varied from 27.2 to 60%. Out of 20 dairy farms included in the present study, nine farms gained a percentage score of greater than or equal to 50% (ranging from 50.4 to 60%), thus their biosecurity status was evaluated as “Good”. The remaining 11 farms attained a percentage score lower than 50% (varying from 27.2 to 46.4%) and therefore graded as “Poor”. In this study biosecurity categorized in to four components: traffic control (21.5 ± 4.3), isolation (14.45 ± 2.2), sanitation (16.65 ± 6.83) and health management (3.25 ± 1.07) with their respective mean ± standard deviation of each component. Out of four biosecurity components: isolation and traffic control were implemented better, but sanitation and animal health management were poorly implemented. Fisher’s exact test analysis of the obtained results showed that among all factors assumed to affect biosecurity adoption, however only a significant association (P < 0.05) between biosecurity status and location of farms was appreciated.