Evaluation of blood chemistry and haemocytometric parameters in milk fed veal calves

Haematological analysis are considered as indices of the physiological state of the animals. The aim of this study was to evaluate serum biochemical and haematological parameters in milk fed calves at different periods oflivestock cycle. 128 healthy cross breeding calves were enrolled in a farm of North-East Italy. Blood sampling were collected from jugular vein at 1 day (t1), 60 days (t2) and 150 days (t3) after housing. AST, GGT, ALP, Glucose,Conjugated and Total Bilirubin, Total Proteins, Creatinine, Urea, P, Mg, Ca, Fe, Red Blood Cells (RBC), Haemoglobin, Haematocrit (HCT), Mean Corpuscular Value (MCV) andMean Corpuscular Haemoglobin (MCH) were analysed. One-way ANOVA and Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test were performed to assess differences between the parameters at the different periods. All parameters analysed were in normal ranges in all periods. The main differences in biochemical parameters concerned AST, GGT, ALP, Bilirubin, Urea and Fe. GGT mean value was statistically higher in t1 (44.73 ± 43.42 U/l) than in t2 (20.78 ± 8.38 U/l) and t3 (20.12 ± 8 U/l). Conjugated Bilirubin values were 0.18 ± 0.11, 0.11 ± 0.10 and 0.05 ± 0.02 mg/dl in t, t2 and t3 respectively.Urea mean values dropped from 20.51 ± 5.93 in t1 to 9.31 ± 5.93 and 9.88 ± 2.56 mg/dl in t2 and t3 respectively. Serum iron levels were in the normal range at t1 (118.70 ± 67.04 µg/dl), but severely decreased in t2 (64.05 ± 34.36µg/dl) and in t3 (34.13 ± 15.44 µg/dl). The decrea se in serum iron concentration lead to a restrained reduction in haemoglobin values (10.19 ± 1.81, 9.93 ± 0.88, 8.14 ± 0.8 g/dl in t1, t2 and t3 respectively). A correspondent decrease in RCB, HCT, MCV and MCH was found. Our results indicated that veal calves in this study didn’t show alterations of metabolic functions according to the period. Blood parameters analysis in farm could represent a simple method for obtaining objective and reliable data about animal health status.