Ten top tips for reducing lameness

Lame cows cost time and money. Foot health and comfort can have an impact not only on yield, but on efficiency, fertility, and overall health.

As part of this programme, at a recent event in Scotland, Nick Bell, Director, Herd Health Consultancy, delivered his top ten tips for managing and reducing lameness in the dairy herd.

1. Team-work and robust data

“The thing that makes the biggest difference every time is team-work, ideally using robust data,” says Nick. “We can do a lot of things really well but still get it wrong if we haven’t got everything lined up. Gathering data is important for finding and understanding what is going wrong, helping the team to work effectively.”

2. Early detection, prompt effective treatment

“This really is crucial,” says Nick.

“As part of an AHDB randomised control trial, we were doing fortnightly mobility scoring on five herds. When we started, these herds had 30% scores 2 and 3. Each new case of a score 2 or above was randomly allocated to one of four choices, a trim, or a trim plus a block, or a trim plus an anti-inflammatory, or a trim plus a block plus an anti-inflammatory. The impact of getting out there and treating the 2s and 3s was very clear and, over the 13-month trial, the levels of lameness halved. But it relies on accurately being able to identify those cows that would benefit from treatment.”

3. Clean, dry foot with routine foot cleaning and disinfection

While a clean dry foot is more resistant to new infections it can still pick up dermatitis. “It’s important to have some sort of cleaning and disinfection routine, which usually means footbaths,” says Nick.

“A daily footbath routine still seems to be the best at controlling digital dermatitis. I find formalin at 3% works best for most herds, although we may drop this for robot herds where they could be going through the footbath up to five times a day. Long, thin footbaths where you get multiple foot plunges seem to be the most effective.”

It is important to ensure heifers and dry cows are also run through the footbath regularly. Nick recommends three days a week for dry cows.

4. Lying comfort

“Herds where there is good lying comfort see the quickest recovery in their lame cows,” says Nick.

“What we do with our cows in early lactation is vital. Cows that have just calved usually have a reduced lying time. They therefore have less time to rest and recover if they have a bruise or an ulcer.”

5. Routine trimming skills and timing

“I’m passionate about routine trimming and it has made a big difference on a lot of the farms I work with,” says Nick.

“Trimming has come on a lot in the past few years. We need to tip the cow forward onto her toes when trimming, reorientating the pedal bone angle. With grinders, it’s very easy to want to make the foot look neater, but this can thin the walls which are the most protective bit of the foot. We want to leave the wall as thick as we can and get her up on to the walls and toe.

“When a cow gets an ulcer, this causes a huge amount of scarring not just to the fat pad but to the pedal bone itself. With correct trimming, we can get the weight off the fat pad, and she can continue to function.”

6. Precondition pre-calf heifers to cubicles and concrete

“The fat pad is the fatty tissue that sits underneath the pedal bone and is key to hoof health,” says Nick. “In a healthy cow, the space under the pedal bone is full of fat, but there are a range of factors that determine how much is in there. A little bit of exercise and walking on concrete can stimulate fatty pad growth. Heifers should be exercised over concrete from at least two months before calving.

“Training heifers to cubicles is also vital. If heifers are new to cubicles when they join the milking herd, they can be standing for 20 – 22 hours a day after calving. If you combine this with a poor fat pad, you start to create the ideal situation for developing ulcers.”

7. Walking comfort

For grazing herds, ensuring the quality of cow tracks can reduce cases of bruising and ulcers.

“Astroturf can be useful for improving tracks in some cases and is often freely available from sports fields that are being ripped up,” says Nick. “But it does still need a good stone base to be successful.

“Rubber matting in and around the housing is also useful, and preference studies show that cows much prefer walking on rubber rather than concrete. We also saw improved cow flow and reduced milking time when installed in parlours and exit lanes.”

Diamond-blade grooving can be a successful way of improving concrete walking areas. “The ideal is about 83mm wide (centre-groove to centre-groove) and as close to 13mm deep as you can,” says Nick. “This will allow moisture to be pulled off the surface and into the groove.”

8. Space

“From a foot health point of view, it’s particularly worth investing in your fresh and transition cow space,” says Nick, “as these cows are very vulnerable.”

Ensuring cows have enough space is important for creating a healthy environment. Housed herds that benefit from wide passages are noticeably calmer, with less bullying and pushing, reducing instances of bruising.

9. Gentle cow handling / cow flow

Cow handling and cow flow can make a big difference both to overall herd and foot health.

“A study in Australia found a 19% variation in average yield based solely on different handling techniques,” says Nick. “The difference in lameness was even more extreme, with cows that experience ‘negative handling’ demonstrating 48% lameness, compared to only 6% in those that were handled more gently.

“An indication of good cow flow is seeing cows with their heads down. They are looking at where they are putting their feet and not pushing which helps to reduce bruising.”

10. Breeding / Genetics

“Finally, it is important to consider the role of genetics in reducing cases of lameness in the dairy herd,” says Nick.

AHDBs Profitable Lifetime Index (PLI) and Spring and Autumn Calving Indexes, incorporate a lameness index. “Based on the average bull coming through, using these indexes you can save on average 1.4 cases of lameness per 100 cows, per year,” says Nick. “This sounds small, but if you add it up, year on year, and if we improve our bulls, that’s actually quite a lot over time.”