Reproductive diseases result in high economic losses and hormone use has been advocated to control these diseases. However, hormone use in dairy farms could be mis- and over-used. Furthermore, hormone residues can present in the milk and/or milk product. This PhD project will investigate the social and epidemiological aspects of hormone use for reproductive diseases. To investigate the effectiveness, the association between hormone use and reproductive diseases and/or performance will be studied. Next, the knowledge, attitude and practices of dairy farmers towards hormone use will be studied. Then the technical and economic outcomes of different strategies of hormone use will be simulated based on data collected. Such an evaluation will give suggestions which hormone use strategies, involving the timing and the frequency of hormone treatments, will be most cost-effective.
This project is supervised by Dr. Bart van den Borne (Wageningen University), Dr. Wilma Steeneveld (Utrecht University) and Prof. Dr. Henk Hogeveen (Wageningen University)
Ardilasunu Wicaksono (Sunu)
Contact: ardilasunu.wicaksono@wur.nl