Journal of Animal Research: v.10 n.3, p. 375-382. June 2020 DOI: 10.30954/2277-940X.03.2020.7 How to cite this article: Bhadauria, P., Lathwal, S.S., Jadoun, Y.S. and Gupta, R. (2020). Metabolic profiling of normal and lame Karan fries cows and its association with lameness during transition period. J. Anim. Res., 10(3): 375-382. Source of Support: None; Conflict of Interest: None Metabolic Profiling of Normal and Lame Karan Fries Cows and its Association with Lameness during Transition Period Pragya Bhadauria 1* , S.S. Lathwal 2 , Y.S. Jadoun 3 and Rohit Gupta 4 1 ICAR-Agricultural Technology Application Research Institute, Ludhiana, INDIA 2 ICAR-National Diary Research Institute, Karnal, INDIA 3 Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana, INDIA 4 Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana, INDIA *Corresponding author: P Bhadauria; E-mail: pragyacari@gmail.com Received: 16 Mar., 2020 Revised: 15 April, 2020 Accepted: 20 April, 2020 ABSTRACT In high yielding dairy cows, one of the major cause of lameness during transition period is the altered nutritional status of pregnant animal. Concentrations of essential nutrients get varied and often decrease around calving due to physiological factors and thus extra-supplementation is recommended in these animals. Blood measures are frequently used in assessment of the vital nutrients for predicting the risk of lameness during this period. The objective of this study was to investigate the nutritional status of healthy and lame Karan Fries (KF) cows and their association with lameness score during transition period. For this fifteen high-yielding crossbreed (KF) healthy cows and fifteen high yielding crossbreed (KF) lame cows were randomly selected from the Livestock Research Centre (LRC) of National Diary Research Institute, Karnal for pooled blood sample collection. Samples were collected 60d, 15d pre-partum, on the day of calving, and 60d, 15d post-partum. The results revealed that the mean plasma biotin, zinc (below critical level) and calcium (within range) levels were significantly lower (P<0.05) in lame KF cows while β-hydroxybutyrate (BHBA) concentrations was significantly higher, however no significant difference in plasma copper, glucose and non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA) concentrations was found in lame cows as compared to normal KF cows during this period. There was also significant (P<0.05) variation of blood biochemical profiles (glucose, NEFA and BHBA) and plasma biotin concentration among different lameness scores (1-5) whereas no relation of mineral profiles (calcium, zinc and copper) was seen with lameness score. Keywords: Lameness, transition period, nutrient deficiency, blood metabolites Though the modern husbandry and management conditions have increased the milk production but all at the cost of higher incidences of health problems. The high- producing dairy cows are always at the verge of abnormal homeostasis. The breeding and feeding of dairy cattle for high milk yields is etiologically related to various metabolic disease common in these animals (Sharma and Upadhyay, 2009). One of the major challenges for dairy producers is to maintain hoof health of high yielder’s during the transition period. Now a day, lameness is one of the most important welfare issues of high producing dairy cows (Eicher et al., 2013). The economic importance of lameness is reported as attributable to impaired reproductive performance (Sogstad et al., 2006), decreased milk production (Green et al., 2010 and Green et al., 2002), culling from the herd (Sprecher et al., 1997), and cost of treatment and control methods (Hernandez and Shearer 2000, Moore 2001). In various studies it was found that the incidence of lameness within 30 days postpartum was 2.2% (Melendez et al., 2003), between 3.5 and 6% during the first 30 days of lactation (Collik et al., 1989) and a high percentage