Health disorders in early-lactation dairy cows during the experimental period.

1Treatments: cows were given 0, 1.5, or 3.0 µg/kg body weight rbTNFα injections daily for the first 7 days of lactation, respectively. There were 11 cows at risk in each treatment.2Ketosis was recorded when the urine ketone dipstick test (Ketostix; Bayer Corp. Diagnostics Division, Elkhart, IN) detected acetoacetate>80 mg/dL on any day or>40 mg/dL for 2 consecutive days. Fever designates that a cow had a rectal temperature greater than 39.4°C. Other health disorders were diagnosed according to the guidelines by Kelton et al. [14]. Fever was excluded from the summary data because of the possibility that it was a direct response to treatment rather than a sign of infection.