Longevity and the association with cattle health in Dutch dairy farms

Longevity of a herd is defined as the average age of all cattle over two years old at the moment of death (either natural, by euthanasia or by slaughter), and is increasing since 2018. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between longevity and cattle health indicators in Dutch dairy herds. Anonymized census data were available for 16,200 Dutch dairy herds (∼98 % of the dairy herds) between 2016 and 2020. All herds were categorized into one of six longevity groups: herds with a high longevity (>seven years old), increasing longevity (mean increase of one year and two months between 2017 and 2020), median longevity (∼five years and eight months, without major fluctuations in longevity), decreasing longevity (mean decrease eight months), low longevity (