[Incidence of anemia in newborn calves]

The indices of the red and white blood picture were studied in a total of 788 calves, aged up to 30 days, 541 out of which were born in the winter-spring months, and 253 of which were born on the same farms in the summer-autumn months, originating from 17 dairy farms of 6 regions of the country. It was found that the calves born on industrial cattle-breeding farms were comparatively often affected with anemia, showing lower hemoglobin level, hematocrit values, and erythrocyte count along with hypoferremia. More widely occurring was the anemia in calves during the winter-spring period as well as in twin calves and calves of cows that gave birth for the first time. Simmenthals and Simmenthal crosses were shown to suffer more often from anemia than the calves of the Bulgarian Brown and Black-and-white breeds and their crosses. There were no sexual differences with regard to the hematologic indices. The percent of day-old diseased calves was comparatively high.