Dairy Herd: Firm Footing for Profit

Healthy Hooves Contribute for Higher Revenue and Lower Costs

Ensuring your dairy herd has healthy feet not only helps you sidestep unwelcome costs, it can put more milk in your bulk tank and more dollars in your pocket. One recent study suggests that a single cow coming up lame during a lactation could set you back by more than $200 in reduced production alone.

Along with reduced milk production, direct losses from lameness include drug costs, veterinary fees and labour. Indirect costs are increased days open and premature culling. While estimates of what lameness costs dairy farmers have varied, researchers at Cornell University have come up with some numbers on the effect of lameness on milk production.

Cows produce less milk after the onset of lameness because they eat less due to pain. Animals with sore feet are reluctant to stand and move to the feed bunk.

The researchers collected lameness data on two New York dairy farms over 1.5 years. The herds were mainly Holstein cows, housed in freestall barns and milked twice or three times a day in parlours. Milk weights were recorded daily.

In herd A, farm employees diagnosed and treated lameness cases. In herd B, lameness was defined as a foot lesion identified by a hoof trimmer at a monthly visit or diagnosis and treatment by farm employees between hoof trimming dates.

The researchers compared milk production for lame cows to animals with sound feet that were in the same herd, lactation group, stage of lactation and season of calving. This ensured that cows were similar to each other in all respects except for lameness.

The study calculated the weekly average of daily milk production per cow and used it to measure the overall effects of lameness on milk production. For each herd the researchers used only the first lameness event in that lactation for an individual cow to calculate production losses.

In herd A, 52 per cent, or 925 of 1,796 cows, were diagnosed lame at least once. The incidence in herd B was 40 per cent, or 287 of 724 cows. Lameness was more likely to occur in cows in early lactation and was diagnosed more commonly in older cows. In both herds, milk production decreased significantly for lame cows.

Overall, lame cows in Herd A produced an average of 1.5 kilograms per day less in the second week after being diagnosed lame compared to non-lame herd mates (see Table 1). Production losses were greater in cows in their second or later lactation compared to cows in their first lactation. The drop in milk production was also more severe-down by 2.8 kg per day-for cows scored by farm employees as exhibiting severe lameness.

How much milk production dropped depended on what caused the lameness. The drop was greater, and lasted longer, for cows with abscesses or sole ulcers than for cows having foot rot or foot warts, or when no lesion could be seen.

Researchers calculated from the herd data that a third-lactation cow that became lame at 100 days in milk (DIM) , and continued to milk another 200 days, would lose 372 kg of milk production compared to a similar cow that was not lame. If you valued that milk at 55 cents per litre, this lost production cost $205 in reduced milk sales alone.

In herd B, milk production decreased by an average of 0.8 kg per day for all cows the second week after they were diagnosed as lame (see Table 2), less than observed in herd A. In first-lactation cows, lameness had no effect on milk production. Among older cows diagnosed lame by employees between hoof trimming visits, however, milk production decreased 4.7 kg per day. In contrast to herd A, foot rot tended to have a longer and larger effect on milk production than abscesses and sole ulcers in herd B.

Table 1 The effect of lameness on milk production (kg/day) for each lactation group and for all cows in Herd A.

Herd A	First Lactation	>Second Lactation	All Cows
Difference in milk (kg)
Before or never lame	0	0	0
Same week	-0.6	1.0	-0.9
1 week after	-0.8	-1.7	-1.4
2 weeks after	-0.8	-1.8	-1.5
>=3 weeks after	-0.7	-1.9	-1.5

Table 2 The effect of lameness on milk production (kg/day) for each lactation group and for all cows in Herd B.

Herd B	First Lactation	>Second Lactation	All Cows
Difference in milk (kg)
Before or never lame	0	0	0
Same week	* -0.3	-0.4	-0.4
1 week after	* -0.4	-0.9	-0.8
2 weeks after	* -0.2	-1.1	-0.8
>=3 weeks after	* 0.1	-0.6	-0.5

*Not significantly different from the baseline level.

Differences in lost milk production between the two herds may have occurred because of differences in identifying and treating lame cows. There may also have been differences in the specific causes of lameness and the frequency in which they occurred. It's possible that herd B's production losses were less than those of herd A because the hoof trimmer was finding lesions and starting therapy sooner than producers would normally have started treatment. Regardless of the differences, both herds experienced decreased milk production in spite of treating lame cows with typical therapies.

The incidence of lameness in these two herds, at 52 per cent and 40 per cent, was higher than has been reported in some other studies, including some from Ontario. Data collected from 158 Ontario farms participating in a 1999 research study estimated the average incidence of lameness to be 13 cases per 100 cows per year. Herd occurrences ranged from 0 to 140 cases per 100 cows per year. This showed that while some Ontario herds had no lameness, others had almost 1.5 cases for every cow in the herd.

Though the Cornell study looked at large numbers of cows, it examined only two large freestall herds. It's possible the same costs might not have occurred in tie-stall herds. However, other research has reported milk production losses for lameness of 440 kg in early lactation and 270 kg in mid to late lactation in tie-stall herds.

Clearly, not all farms will have losses identical to the ones found in this study. However, the information from these two herds increases our understanding of the profound economic impact lameness can have in a dairy herd. Lameness in dairy cows reduces cow health, productivity and animal welfare, and is a major reason for premature culling.

To help prevent lameness in your herd, ask yourself these questions: who, what, where, when and why? To find the answers you have to record lameness events on paper or in a computer database and review them regularly. Record the cow ID, lactation number, DIM, date of trimming or treatment, lesion or diagnosis, and treatment given. Finding the cause of the lameness, whether infectious, nutritional, or traumatic, will help you focus on preventive measures.

Lame cows in your herd cost you money. Many factors that cause it are due to herd management choices. Changing management practices and facility design to decrease the incidence of lameness will save you dollars.

Here's a checklist for reducing lameness in your herd

Dairy farmers have reduced lameness in their herds by:

   * scraping alleys more frequently to decrease the. amount of slurry cows stand and walk in;
   * reducing overcrowding in pens to prevent manure buildup;
   * increasing the frequency of manure removal from the backs of tie-stalls;
   * using a shaker box to measure forage length as a way of preventing laminitis;
   * placing rubber mats in front of feedbunks to decrease the wear and trauma on concrete;
   * improving lying times by increasing stall dimensions;
   * using properly maintained footbaths;
   * treating digital dermatitis promptly and correctly;.
   * trimming feet once or twice a year.

References: The Effect of Lameness on Milk Production in Dairy Cows. 2001. Warnick, L.D.,Janssen, D., Guard, C.L., and Grohn, Y. T. Journal of Dairy Science 84: 1988-1997. Investigating Herds with Lameness Problems. 2001. Guard, C. Veterinary Clinics of North America: Food Animal Practice 17: 175-186. Ceptor-Animal Health News, Vol. 8, 2000.

^{This article appeared in the Dec 2001 Ruminations of the Ontario Milk Producer.}

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