Preventive herd surveillance program as a tool in dairy herd management

It is not possible to fix upper limits for milk yield with special respect to undisturbed herd health. Mean herd yield up to 11000kg milk/305 days can be realized without fundamental negative effects on cow health status. But risk for fertility and health problems increases as milk yield is growing. If cows get sick, than therapeutic succes reduces and the culling rate increases with higher milk yield. Therefore medical care should be focussed more and more on preventive methods with growing milk yield. Methods are described to evaluate risk factors for development of herd health problems. If these diagnostic methods are used consequently in herd management, then good fertility and undisturbed herd health can be reached with high yielding dairy cows.