Healthy Feet Lite

Healthy Feet Lite helps you reduce the number of lame cows on your farm by identifying and applying the right management techniques.

Lame cows cost time and money. They are not only a potential welfare issue, but they can also affect staff morale. The term lameness covers many conditions, some are caused by infection and some by physical and management factors.

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What is Healthy Feet Lite?

Healthy Feet Lite is:

• a scaled-down version of the Healthy Feet Programme to make it more accessible to farmers
• an easier “entry-level” to the full Healthy Feet Programme
• delivered by trained Mobility Mentors who work with you to create an achievable set of action points to tackle lameness on your farm

What does Healthy Feet Lite involve?

To engage in Healthy Feet Lite, follow these steps:

Step 1: Find a mobility mentor near you

Step 2: Arrange for your Mobility Mentor to visit your farm. They will establish what stage you are at with your lameness management and a usual starting point is to have an independent mobility score* of the herd. A review of trimming and treatment records will help establish the main types of lesions.

Then the Mobility Mentor can conduct a risk assessment which is targeted for your most important cause of lameness.

Step 3: Discuss and agree a set of specific actions with your Mobility Mentor which can be actioned by you and your farm team. The skill is to keep the list short and focused but make sure it includes the things which will have the greatest impact for your farm.

Anticipate all this taking around 2-3 hours to get you to this point (excluding the herd mobility scoring).   

Step 4: Arrange a follow-up phone call with your Mobility Mentor after 3 weeks. A review can be scheduled again after 6 or 12 months to re-evaluate and assess progress against actions.

Step 5:  Continue to implement your actions and enjoy having fewer lame cows in your herd.

*The independent mobility score does not necessarily need to be done by the Mobility Mentor, it can be done by an independent accredited scorer listed on the Register of Mobility Scorers (ROMS) prior to the Mobility Mentor visit.

Dairy farmer, Grant Hartman discusses how using the Healthy Feet Lite helped him and his staff identify the key lameness issues on his farm and the benefits achieved when he addressed some of these issues.