Culling: Impact of Feeding on Foot Health

This is really an article for brain storming of livestock farmers. It has given proper details that lameness not only increases discomfort to cow, but how seriously it affects the dairy farmer in economic terms.
My personal experience shows that the following factors play crucial role in this menace:
1. age of the animal
2. keeping high yielding animals underfed
3. living conditions for the animals
4. and neglect of the farmer towards well foot care of the animals.

We are seeing more lameness where we see more slopes on barns placing pressure on the corium band and cows are having a harder time entering the parlor resulting in slower milk outs and higher SCC. Moldy feed increases lameness due to the toxins and the inability for the rumen to function, especially with lower milk prices and not being able to get the proper nutrition to a cow. We see more lameness when dairy men use formaldehyde as the trimmers have a hard time breathing. It is simply a domino affect, the higher the SCC, the more the lameness, the worse the teat ends, the more mastitis, the more the harry warts, the lower the preg rates, the lower the production, the lower the longevity, the more health problems people have.