INDIVIDUAL COW CARE TO LOWER LAMENESS IN YOUR HERD By Jamie Sullivan for Progressive Dairyman • Reprinted with permission from Progressive Dairyman, March 22, 2011
I have been in the hoof care business for more than 16 years and have seen my herds expand in size over and over again. The industry has integrated from mid-size herds in tiestalls and cows spending much of their time on pasture to larger freestall operations with cows spending most or all of their time walking on concrete. During this time, cow comfort has improved dramatically through stall size and design, ventilation, water access, etc., in these modern enterprises. In most cases these improvements have made cow comfort better in these larger farms, but concrete can never replace the cushion and relief that time on pasture can provide. Also, concrete does not have the forgiveness that pasture provides on a cow’s hooves that have become overgrown or out of balance, but that does not mean we need to have to accept a higher incidence of lameness in our modern dairy barns or that we can’t have happy, healthy cows in these types of environments. However, it does take a lot more effort, management and good accurate recordkeeping to make sure we are keeping our cows healthy, productive and profitable. The days of trimming the cow once or even twice a year are gone. We need to provide the individual care that was more easily accomplished when there were only 50 to 100 cows to keep track of. Then it was easy to just have us hoof trimmers come twice a year or, more ideally, every five months and do a whole-herd trim. Most of my larger herds prefer to have a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly appointment. That is why I decided, as a hoof trimmer, I needed to help in the record-keeping department and decided to invest in a “chute-side” computer system to record the cows trimmed and the lesions observed on the hooves. Now, at the end of the trim session, there are detailed individual cow reports and easy-to-read herd summaries. These reports could be shared and viewed by everyone involved in the herd’s health, including the vet, nutritionist and other farm consultants. 10
There was no longer a “communication breakdown” from what was actually seen on trim day and what got reported back to others not present on trim day. It was also amazing how quickly most of my clients started to look at hoof health in their herds. The clients and their employees were now starting to focus on the “real” issues and not the “perceived” issues in regards to hoof health. I was able to gain trust and take more control to make sure the cows that needed extra attention were put on a re-check trim list. Over the following year, as I got more cows in my chute-side computer system (Hoof Supervisor), I quickly began to notice that even in my best-managed herds, we were missing some cows that should have been trimmed sooner. In most of my herds the trimming protocol was to perform the first trim in the lactation within the first 100 to 150 DIM (days in milk) and again just before dry-off. The results of this protocol can be seen from one of my clients where in June ’08 (Figure 1) the herd had a lameness incidence as Figure 1
high as 44 percent. In less than a year, by following the trim protocol, we were able to lower the lameness incidence to about 10 percent (Figure 2). In a perfect world, when all cows freshen every 12 to 13 months, this protocol would probably work well and be sufficient, but what about those cows that take 200+ days to get pregnant? I began wondering what else I could do to help my clients to achieve a lameness incidence less than 5 percent. I kept coming back to the small herd mentality and individual cow care. More easily said than done when we are talking about hundreds of cows to keep track of and much of the daily work done by hired employees, but I figured with the many dairy management software programs on the market today such as DC305, PC Dart, VAMP, etc., this should be possible. By making another investment in my business with one of these software programs, we were able to interface more lactation information into the chute-side computer system and were able to monitor hoof health by DIM,
Cows trimmed 6/1/2008 to 6/30/2008
Lesions as a percent of cows trimmed
Lesions as a percent of total lesions 26.60%
97.83% 2.17%
9.57% 13.83%
20.21%
21.28% 8.51% Cows without lesions (1) - 2.17%
(W) - White line lesion
(U) - Sole ulcer
Cows with lesions (45) - 97.83%
(H) - Sole hemorrhage
(T) - Toe ulcer
(D) - Digital dermatitis
(C) - Corkscrew claw
Figure 2
Cows trimmed 5/1/2009 to 5/31/2009
Lesions as a percent of cows trimmed 63.41%
36.59%
Lesions as a percent of total lesions
37.78%
15.56%
22.22%
20.00%
2.22% 2.22%
Cows without lesions (15) - 36.59%
(W) - White line lesion
(U) - Sole ulcer
Cows with lesions (26) - 63.41%
(H) - Sole hemorrhage
(V) - Vertical fissure
(D) - Digital dermatitis
(I) - Interdigital dermatitis