| Dystocia is a prolonged and difficult parturition requiring the use of specialist instruments, which is of great economic importance due to the cost of treatment increasing together with an increase in difficulty of the first and subsequent calving or even the death of calves and cows. There are many factors that cause dystocia in beef cattle, including genetic factors and non-genetic factors, such as cow factors, fetal factors, bull factors, nutritional factors and environmental factors. Calf birth weight, maternal pelvic size and gestation length are the three most important factors. The interplays of these factors make dystocia a very complicated physiological and pathological phenomenon. In the beef cattle developed countries, beef cattle researchers and industries pay great attention to cow reproduction, and have carried out a lot of fruitful researches and analyses. However, the domestic research is still very weak. On the basis of a detailed analysis of the international reports on beef cattle breeding and production in the past decades, especially data from developed countries, the problems of dystocia during the process of beef cattle breeding and production were comprehensively reviewed, which can be used for reference by domestic beef cattle practitioners. |