Welfare Impact of Heel Height on Claws Overgrowing of Mediterranean Italian Buffalo

The objectives of this study were to detect the impact of heel height (HH) on: 1) claws overgrowing (CO), and 2) milk yield (MY) in Mediterranean Italian Buffalo, to improve animal welfare. Data of HH and MY where collected from 740 Mediterranean Italian Buffalo, in five herds, by two evaluators, in the year 2016. CO was reported for each animal. To detect the impact of HH on claws overgrowing, adjusted means of HH for buffalo that showed CO, and for animals that did not show CO, were contrasted using PROC GLM procedure of SAS (SAS, 2005). Whereas, for investigating the effect of HH on MY, estimates of MY for HH classes were estimated using MTDFREML sets of programs. The fixed model for the analysis includes age-parity, days in milk, and lactation year, as fixed effects; and random effect of residual. Solutions of MY for HH classes were fitted using non-linear regression model, where HH was the explanatory variable. Unadjusted mean for HH was 4.05 [+ or -] 1.20 cm; whereas, unadjusted mean for MY was 2,466.9 [+ or -] 426.4 kg. Buffalo with CO showed smaller (P