Bone-specific alkaline phosphatase activity in dairy cows

Bone-specific alkaline phosphatase is considered the single most accurate marker of bone formation. In this study, 75 healthy Holstein dairy cows in their first, second, third, fourth or fifth parities underwent serum bone-specific alkaline phosphatase quantification. The results indicate that enzyme activity values have a decreasing pattern with increasing order of parity (p 0.1). We concluded that bone-specific alkaline phosphatase measurement by heat inactivation provides a simple method to determine bone metabolic status and useful data to evaluate calcium availability in dairy cows.