Mindset Dutch Dairy Farmer’s (Advisors) about Claw Health
Introduction
Lameness is an important farm-related disorder
• Economic damage (Huxley, 2013, Dolecheck and Bewley, 2018; Edwardis et al., 2022)
• reduced production and fertility
• costs of treatment
• premature culling/euthanasia, accounting for 25% of deaths of all dairy cows (Thomsen, 2022)
• Animal welfare. (Bruijnis et al., 2011)
Prevalence of lameness is over 30 years estimated to be around 20- 30% (Thomsen et al., 2023).
The objective of this study:
A query was performed:
Material and Methods
• To gain insight into the ‘mindset’ of dairy farmer’s + advisors about claw health of dairy cows.
• More information about their perception
• Experience common disorders
• Influence of various parameters
• Other factors/media of influence
An investigation into the mindset in 2021:
> 200 Dutch dairy farmers
20 of each advisors (veterinarians, claw trimmers and feeding advisors)
A structured questionnaire
Locomotion score according to Sprecher et al (1997), 1-5 scale Statistics
• Questionnaire performed in Formdesk
• At end of data collection, data was downloaded in Excel format
• Aoaded into Stata/Se 17.0.
• Open questions: elaborated using descriptive statitics.
Results
Participants, all male
Figure 2 shows how the different advisors estimate the importance of claw health in relation to parameters: udder health, fertility and milk production. Only practitioners consider udder health more important than claw health, in contrast to claw trimmers and feeding advisors. Suboptimal nutrition is considered as a factor of great importance by:
• 55% of dairy practitioners
• 80% of claw trimmers
• 30% feeding advisors
Discussion
Claw health:
• Considered important in nowadays
• Farmers more satisfied than advisors
• Advisors did not see improvement last 5 years
• DD and Claw-Health Disruption main disorders and footrot also mentioned by practitioners
• No commen sense about nutrition
• Better and uniform advice to farmers is desirable
• Better claw health reflects in better production and welfare
• No improvement due to lack of time and knowledge
• Advisors: better claw health is realistic in case of earlier intervention
Conclusions
As license to produce better claw health in most dairy farms is necessary
Improvement in claw health must be realized by:
- Better application of current knowledge
- Common dissemination of uniform formulated advice
- Prevention of and rapid intervention in case of clawhealth problems
References available on Request by 1st author
