The present study was carried out between October 2014 and September 2015 to characterize and evaluate 297 different cattle and buffalo dairy production systems which represents the most distributed diary systems in Egypt. The Systems included Commercial Systems (CS), Government commercial Systems (GS), Government Research Systems (GR), Traditional Landless system (TLL), Traditional mixed system (TMS) and Traditional intensive Systems (TIS).
Results showed that animal breeds had highly significant effect (P<0.001) on all productive traits. Least squares means ± SD of total milk yield were 10613± 2692 kg , 2715± 1697kg, 1844± 86kg, 1629± 637kg, 1661± 714kg and 2603 ± 733kg for (CS), (GS), (GR), (TLL), (TMS) and (TIS),respectively. However, 4% fat corrected milk yield (FCM) reached the value of 10136.32± 2571.29, 2470.82 ± 1544.36, 2813.09 ± 862.32, 2858.44± 1196.06, 2712.45 ± 1270.82 and 2901.17± 853.08 kg for (CS), (GS), (GR), (TLL), (TMS) and (TIS), respectively.
Least squares means ± SD for average daily milk yield per head were 27.78 ± 5.53, 9.41 ± 3.74, 6.81 ± 2.02, 7.37 ± 2.68, 6.22 ± 2.49 kg and 11.30 ± 2.56 kg for (CS), (GS), (GR), (TLL), (TMS) and (TIS) respectively. The average of daily fat corrected milk per head were 26.14 ± 5.13, 8.55 ± 3.24, 10.37 ± 3.02, 10.31 ± 4.14, 10.79 ± 3.95 and 12.24 ± 4.25 kg for the same systems, respectively. This associated with lactation length (LL) of 387.77 ± 98.39, 289.50 ± 140.76, 271.04 ± 92.21, 222.59 ± 36.22, 266.15 ± 30.96 and 230.12 ± 28.96 days, respectively.
Reproductive traits such as calving interval (CI), service period (SP) and numbers of services per conception (NSPC) showed highly significant differences among the different systems. Least squares means ± SD of (CI) for (CS), (GS), (GR), (TLL), (TMS) and (TIS) systems were 438.30 ± 112.766, 470.75 ± 113.434, 533.67 ± 91.896, 387.57 ± 56.293, 410.86 ± 62.202 and 423.75 ± 53.817 days, respectively. However, the least squares mean ± SD of (SP) were 163.12 ± 110.23, 107.72 ± 69.63, 155.50 ± 89.57, 117.57 ± 56.29, 140.86 ± 62.20 and 153.75 ± 53.82 days for the same systems, respectively. Furthermore least squares means ± SD of (NSPC) were 3.05 ± 2.52, 2.22 ± 1.30, 2.01 ± 0.48, 1.38 ± 0.68, 1.33 ± 0.57 and 1.65 ± 0.78 services (CS), (GS), (GR), (TLL), (TMS) and (TIS), respectively.All production systems showed imbalanced herd structure.