Hemoparasitic diseases represent a significant problem with a considerable impact on tropical and subtropical areas of the world. These conditions cause economic losses associated with multi-organic failure and even the death of animals. In these areas, the hemoparasites are transmitted in an enzootic cycle when infectious cattle, such as persistently infected animals, including cows, contribute to the success of transmission. However, the factors associated with transmission have always been considered environmental issues, disregarding herd management and practices. In this sense, we conducted a cross-sectional study sampling 360 female cattle older than one year to identify infectious cattle using the PCR technique. We employed a dichotomic questionnaire for association analyses in 150 herds of the southern Andean region of Colombia. Overall prevalence with infectious cattle was 52.5% for Babesia spp., Anaplasma spp., and Trypanosoma spp., and the significant risk factors (p < 0.05) included geographic area, animal weight, purchase of cattle for fattening, disinfection of clothing after contact with neighboring animals, self-medication, separation of animals in pens, supply of mineralized salt, presence of livestock from other owners on the farm, prevention of joint trauma, documented milking routine, and sending blood samples for analysis. These practices permitted the maintenance of persistently infected animals and their movement to shed the agents to other animals in the presence of vectors. This suggests the importance of implementing comprehensive control and training measures to reduce the infectious cattle and, therefore, the profitability of dual-purpose livestock farms in the Andean region of southwestern Colombia.

Approximately 60% of milk production in Colombia comes from dual-purpose (DP) systems, which face limitations in defining racial composition and maintaining production records for genetic resource management in the regions. The objective of this study was to evaluate the phenotypic diversity of cattle in DP systems and generate indicators that link this diversity to productivity, contributing to sustainability in these territories. A total of 2760 animals were phenotypically classified using two criteria associated with Breed Classification (BC) and Apparent Phenotypic Predominance (APP). Linear mixed models including fixed effects of region, covariates of age of cow and days in milk, and animal as random effect, were applied to daily milk records from 2042 cows to estimate the productivity of the breed assignment criteria in the genetic resource management. Most animals (66.92%) were assigned to the Mixed genetic group because its unknown genetic origin. Based on BC the second group comprise individuals classified as Crossbred (10.72%) that exhibit known genetic origin, but their genetic management was hindered by the lack of productive information. Meanwhile, the APP criteria was relevant to describe how either zebuine or taurine breed predominance influenced the daily milk production (3.52 ± 0.76 to 5.8 ± 0.14 kg, respectively) of individuals according to the environmental offerings in the regions. When assessing the impact of phenotypic selection processes in females based on a 1 kg increase in daily milk production could raise the population’s average daily productivity by 0.49 kg. However, this approach poses a risk to the inventory of Mixed animals, which have been used as a genetic resource adapted to the region for several decades.