Economic Impact of Lameness

Kim Clark Author

11/11/2019 Added

64 Plays

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Lameness is the most costly illness on dairy farms. Dr. Jan Shearer from Iowa State University discusses the economic impact of lameness on dairy farms.

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[00:00:02.420]Good afternoon everyone.
[00:00:04.200]Welcome to the Dairy Profitability webinar series.
[00:00:08.190]We are kicking off this series talking about
[00:00:12.080]the economic impact of lameness.
[00:00:14.750]We are pleased that Dr. Jan Shearer is here with us today
[00:00:19.330]to talk about lameness and its economic impact.
[00:00:23.630]My name is Kim Clark.
[00:00:25.220]I am a dairy extension educator here at
[00:00:28.360]the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
[00:00:31.839]Sitting next to me I have Hannah, who is an undergraduate
[00:00:36.950]student with an interest in dairy extension.
[00:00:39.940]She is doing an internship with me this year as well.
[00:00:45.820]Dr. Shearer is at Iowa State University.
[00:00:50.930]His main interest is lameness and welfare of animals.
[00:00:55.420]Dr. Shearer established the master hoof care program,
[00:00:59.160]which has acquired international prominence
[00:01:02.460]for its positive impact on hoof health on dairies.
[00:01:07.470]I'll turn it over to Dr. Shearer.
[00:01:09.500]Again, before Dr. Shearer starts, everyone is muted.
[00:01:13.790]So feel free to type your questions in the chat.
[00:01:17.470]This webinar is being recorded
[00:01:19.580]and so we'll have it online for playback later.
[00:01:24.170]In the chat I will post the link for
[00:01:28.690]the website that you can find the recording.
[00:01:33.931]Great, thank you very much Kim and Hannah,
[00:01:36.330]who put this together.
[00:01:38.930]It's a pleasure to visit with you today about this issue.
[00:01:44.489]It's I think critically important and I think often times
[00:01:47.340]misunderstood, the significance of lameness
[00:01:52.280]as it impacts our economic
[00:01:59.150]bottom line, let's say, in the dairy industry,
[00:02:01.930]because it is really significant issue.
[00:02:06.110]It's a very, very complicated one in the sense that
[00:02:09.820]there are a multitude of issues that we deal with
[00:02:15.140]that can cause this lameness disorders.
[00:02:18.150]Here you see just a variety of different claw disorders
[00:02:24.190]and infectious skin disorders of the foot
[00:02:27.550]and also in the lower left, the cow that is obviously
[00:02:32.350]got an upper leg disorder there from a slipping
[00:02:38.130]and possibly luxating on both hips.
[00:02:43.259]This is not an uncommon thing to happen around the time
[00:02:45.580]of calving, when animals get on slippery surfaces,
[00:02:50.360]when they may be a little weaker,
[00:02:52.340]possibly from milk fever or some other issue.
[00:02:54.870]The point is is that there are a whole host of issues
[00:02:59.070]that can cause us problems with respect
[00:03:02.590]to locomotion and lameness.
[00:03:04.830]So we're gonna just touch on a few of these today and look
[00:03:09.320]more carefully at the impact on the economics of it.
[00:03:16.680]I think first of all though, maybe let's just quickly
[00:03:19.910]review those conditions that are most apt to cause
[00:03:24.340]these problems and often times these are disorders
[00:03:27.920]of the hoof or the digit or the claw.
[00:03:31.870]Those are most commonly sole ulcers.
[00:03:34.950]We can also have heel and toe ulcers.
[00:03:39.400]White line disease is another common disorder
[00:03:42.820]that causes abscess type problems in the hoof or the claw.
[00:03:49.060]Then we have traumatic lesions of the sole that can occur
[00:03:53.100]from, in some cases, an animal stepping on something sharp
[00:03:58.330]on the floor that causes a puncture in the sole,
[00:04:02.040]foreign bodies that make contact with a sore or deeper
[00:04:07.510]tissues within the foot and the corium,
[00:04:10.670]the part that actually forms the hoof wall itself.
[00:04:14.970]Then we can get breaks in the sole that may occur
[00:04:18.010]as a consequence of excessive wear, such as toe ulcers
[00:04:21.970]and one in particular that we deal with in large herds
[00:04:25.520]from excessive, maybe excessive distance
[00:04:29.960]and excessive wear on feet
[00:04:32.360]from walking long distances, a thin sole toe ulcer.
[00:04:38.140]So these are all very common disorders that we deal with
[00:04:42.410]and they are very, very debilitating because of the nature
[00:04:46.940]of the conditions that they cause in feet.
[00:04:51.420]Another one, I apologize,
[00:04:54.040]here but if there folks in the audience who
[00:04:57.920]speak Spanish, we're looking here at ulcers in the sole
[00:05:02.160]or in Spanish, (speaking in foreign language).
[00:05:05.440]On the other side here, on the right side,
[00:05:08.060]we're looking at white line disease or
[00:05:12.262](speaking in foreign language) and we're looking at
[00:05:16.180]two conditions here that are extremely common.
[00:05:20.090]We look, for instance, at the ones on the left here,
[00:05:22.440]the ulcers in the sole, they typically occur in the location
[00:05:27.210]that you see right here.
[00:05:29.730]This is the natural, normal location for these to occur.
[00:05:34.192]These are very debilitating, particularly when they become
[00:05:39.830]quite advanced.
[00:05:42.149]These are very, very important lesions in cattle
[00:05:47.130]and very common causes of lameness.
[00:05:50.430]Then the white line condition can also be extremely
[00:05:54.490]important to us as well.
[00:05:56.406]We quite often times will find these for sure develop
[00:06:01.130]into abscess formation within the claw or beneath the sole
[00:06:06.650]or beneath the wall in some cases,
[00:06:08.800]depending on where they occur.
[00:06:11.130]They become also, extremely debilitating types of lameness.
[00:06:17.800]This is a puncture in the sole that we're seeing right
[00:06:21.640]here that is not in the white line.
[00:06:24.700]The white line is really out here in this outer edge.
[00:06:28.510]This is really the white line where a lot of our
[00:06:30.670]conditions occur in claws, but if you notice,
[00:06:33.420]this is a puncture that's just inside that region.
[00:06:36.880]It's important when we're looking at these,
[00:06:38.682]to kind of try to decide, is this a puncture in the sole,
[00:06:43.210]is this a condition that's occurring in the white line.
[00:06:46.110]Because the white line tends to be a common source
[00:06:50.590]for problems because it is softer hoof horn
[00:06:54.470]and it's more easily damaged and invaded by organic matter.
[00:07:00.010]So that's normally where a lot of these conditions occur.
[00:07:03.980]This is an example then, of a traumatic kind of a lesion,
[00:07:07.423]where an animal has stepped on something sharp.
[00:07:10.640]Quite often times, it's a case where they step on a nail
[00:07:15.450]or in many cases, where rubber has come up
[00:07:18.040]that's been nailed down to the floor.
[00:07:19.890]They step on the remnant of that nail that still protrudes
[00:07:25.220]up through the cement or through the floor.
[00:07:27.948]That can cause some very serious types
[00:07:32.410]of lesions in the sole.
[00:07:36.460]We can also find at times,
[00:07:39.070]a variety of other types of conditions.
[00:07:41.140]In the upper left we see a screw that's up into the axial
[00:07:46.200]or the inner claw wall.
[00:07:49.550]Those can be very, very debilitating and very, very
[00:07:52.170]painful of course, and cause some pretty serious lesions,
[00:07:55.480]particularly when they're real deep within the claw.
[00:08:00.590]Down in the lower left there we see
[00:08:03.620]a tooth that's actually embedded in the sole here
[00:08:07.150]and this is not uncommon.
[00:08:09.410]Animals in their first lactation will quite often times
[00:08:12.470]still be losing some of these molars.
[00:08:16.490]When that happens, those can end up and find their way
[00:08:20.111]to the foot as well.
[00:08:22.200]Here we have a hypodermic needle here on the lower right
[00:08:25.801]that's been pulled out of the claw right here.
[00:08:28.870]Those can cause very serious lesions because they
[00:08:32.548]go very, very deep, often times, all the way up into
[00:08:36.140]back to the bone.
[00:08:37.770]In the upper right, we have a nail that is embedded
[00:08:42.700]in the sole as well.
[00:08:44.570]So there's all kinds of different types of foreign bodies
[00:08:49.060]that can become impacted into claws as well.
[00:08:56.470]On the upper left here, we can also find the problem
[00:09:00.760]that I mentioned earlier, the thinning of the sole.
[00:09:04.620]Here we have the hoof tester on the inner sole.
[00:09:08.410]Here we have it on the outer sole
[00:09:09.810]and you see how flexible that sole is.
[00:09:13.130]This is the thin sole problem that becomes really, really
[00:09:17.860]a difficult one to manage here.
[00:09:20.010]On the lower left you see this thin soled
[00:09:23.900]toe ulcer we call that.
[00:09:25.410]That's just the corium that's shining through there
[00:09:27.897]because the sole has become so thin
[00:09:31.365]that the corium will actually,
[00:09:33.380]eventually protrude through there.
[00:09:35.910]This can be an extremely debilitating kind of a condition
[00:09:39.030]and it's very, very difficult to manage,
[00:09:42.150]particularly when it occurs early in lactation
[00:09:44.510]because it's very, very different to get new horn growth
[00:09:49.060]to occur throughout that lactation,
[00:09:51.530]especially if this animal has an any great distance to walk.
[00:09:55.409]So thin soles and thin soled toe ulcers become really
[00:10:00.770]important conditions, very very debilitating types
[00:10:04.160]of conditions that we can run into in herds.
[00:10:09.260]Then of course, we can't forget the other infectious
[00:10:14.320]disorders of the foot.
[00:10:16.110]Here we're looking at a foot rot, a very nasty necrotic
[00:10:20.440]lesion in the inner digital skin.
[00:10:22.880]A foot that has got a generalized swelling
[00:10:27.320]throughout the foot.
[00:10:28.720]This is an extremely debilitating kind of a condition,
[00:10:32.360]although we can treat it when we detect it early.
[00:10:36.310]As you'll see here a little later, that this is a very,
[00:10:40.070]very costly disease for us because generally when it occurs
[00:10:46.260]for one thing, but also because it causes some very,
[00:10:50.560]very extreme lameness, some very severe problems
[00:10:54.990]for the cow when this problem develops.
[00:10:58.590]It also has some very bad complications,
[00:11:02.640]whereas the infections themselves can localize in joints
[00:11:07.830]and create for us a very, very chronic
[00:11:11.870]and very, very severe lameness disorders,
[00:11:16.150]that may in some cases, require surgery for the cow
[00:11:19.840]or often times may require us to euthanize the animal
[00:11:24.720]because there is no other real good options for us.
[00:11:29.070]This is an important disease and one that fortunately,
[00:11:33.080]tends not to occur as frequently as possibly some
[00:11:36.610]of the claw disorders we looked at there earlier.
[00:11:40.170]But it is, none the less, an extremely important one.
[00:11:43.720]In the winter time, sometimes the rates start to
[00:11:49.520]escalate rather significantly with this particular lesion.
[00:11:54.290]So lameness due to foot rot is really an important
[00:11:58.800]condition for us to be aware of.
[00:12:01.650]Then we have of course, the one that I think most of us
[00:12:05.570]are aware of and that digital dermatitis
[00:12:09.380]or the hair heel wart condition, which still remains one
[00:12:14.660]that is really one that very difficult to control.
[00:12:20.510]The work we've done here at Iowa State shows that in fact,
[00:12:25.360]even with topical therapies, with tetracycline for example,
[00:12:31.090]two or three times in a row we still don't get permanent
[00:12:35.450]improvement or permanent elimination of the disease,
[00:12:40.970]even with very aggressive types of treatment.
[00:12:44.580]So this one is one that we're still trying to find
[00:12:50.820]better ways to manage because it is such a common
[00:12:54.330]disorder in our industry.
[00:12:56.380]In fact, the most common, the most common cause of lameness
[00:13:00.360]in fact, and it is one that we still don't have
[00:13:04.882]good answers for how to manage.
[00:13:08.950]Those are just a quick overview of some of the most
[00:13:12.740]important lesions that we deal with.
[00:13:15.860]I'll talk a little bit more about some of the specifics
[00:13:18.860]of these and what little information we have
[00:13:22.390]on the specific degree of impact
[00:13:27.170]that these have financial or economically.
[00:13:30.780]The cost of lameness is the thing that we are talking about
[00:13:34.590]here today and it's a very important one
[00:13:36.660]to take a look at.
[00:13:38.580]It is the most costly clinical disease of dairy cattle.
[00:13:43.190]A lot of people would be surprised at that,
[00:13:46.196]but in fact, when you look at this particular disease
[00:13:51.070]and how common it is today, it makes total sense.
[00:13:56.540]Look at this graph, for example.
[00:13:59.293]As you see this graph, we see that we have here
[00:14:04.930]we have mastitis, we have a number of issues here.
[00:14:09.000]I'll get this out of the way.
[00:14:10.470]A number of issues here, mastitis, lameness,
[00:14:14.010]displaced abomasum, retained placenta,
[00:14:16.796]and metritis and what you see here is,
[00:14:20.830]is that mastitis is a very significant disease
[00:14:24.790]from the standpoint of economic loss,
[00:14:26.870]particularly in individual cow, a case $262.00 per cow
[00:14:32.420]is an estimate here in this particular slide
[00:14:35.860]from work that's been done by Dr. Chuck Guard
[00:14:39.000]from Cornell University.
[00:14:41.630]If you consider that on a herd cost per year,
[00:14:46.050]considering normal rates of clinical disease,
[00:14:49.857]$10,490.00 would not be out of the range
[00:14:54.517]of likelihood of cost of lameness for a herd
[00:14:59.630]of only 100 cows, that's what we're looking at.
[00:15:01.880]In this right hand corner here, cost of 100 cows,
[00:15:06.943]a cost per year of somewhere around $10,400.00
[00:15:10.380]from the clinical causes of lameness.
[00:15:12.780]That's the ones where cows get very, very ill.
[00:15:16.730]The ones that we are apt to have to treat individually.
[00:15:21.740]But then look down here at lameness and displaced abomasum.
[00:15:26.890]These are the ones, the twisted stomach,
[00:15:30.010]that abomasal displacement problems that occur.
[00:15:33.245]Notice that this is probably because it requires surgery
[00:15:36.720]in most cases.
[00:15:38.110]One of the most costly of clinical diseases,
[00:15:40.823]$489.00 cost per cow.
[00:15:44.140]But because the incidence of that is relatively low,
[00:15:47.300]we hope certainly, in most cases that does not amount
[00:15:50.840]to a very significant amount of loss in our herd cost
[00:15:55.810]per year for 100 cows, for example.
[00:15:58.530]But let's look here at lameness.
[00:16:00.880]Look at this one, the cost is about the same,
[00:16:03.450]roughly $478.00 by this estimate.
[00:16:06.968]I usually consider the cost to be somewhere
[00:16:11.140]in that 470 to $500.00 or more
[00:16:15.930]cost per cow with lameness.
[00:16:19.030]If you look at that cost on a per year basis for 100 cows,
[00:16:23.680]we're looking at a very substantial amount of loss.
[00:16:28.060]The point is, as I say, and I think it's an important one
[00:16:31.180]to remember, the most costly clinical disease
[00:16:34.762]of dairy cattle is lameness.
[00:16:38.450]It behooves us to try to do all that we can
[00:16:41.683]to manage this particular condition.
[00:16:46.710]One way that you probably are wondering,
[00:16:48.960]well how do we come up with these cost estimates?
[00:16:52.570]Well, they again, we go back to some of the work
[00:16:54.910]that Dr. Chuck Guard has done at Cornell
[00:16:58.970]and presented over the years.
[00:17:00.510]This is from a few years ago, but it still is the way
[00:17:03.480]we look at these things today.
[00:17:06.050]The cause of cost of economic loss and where it really
[00:17:11.590]accounts from is that in some cases we end up
[00:17:14.140]with death, albeit it's a smaller amount of animals
[00:17:18.070]that actually die with this kind of a condition.
[00:17:22.910]Although, that may be a little higher today because
[00:17:25.610]in some cases, the only option for managing those
[00:17:29.850]is euthanasia, so that death cost could be higher
[00:17:33.360]because in fact, in some cases, because these very severe
[00:17:38.880]types of lameness we cannot provide relief,
[00:17:43.260]medical therapy that's gonna provide us a relief
[00:17:45.465]from that condition.
[00:17:46.800]So we may end up with euthanasia of those animals.
[00:17:51.660]The cost, in general, if it was only a 2% number
[00:17:56.620]of animals, that would be $44.00 of loss there.
[00:18:01.130]Culling, these animals are culled earlier normally,
[00:18:05.750]because they don't reproduce, they don't become pregnant.
[00:18:10.170]The rate of loss is greater for culling purposes.
[00:18:16.720]Here is estimated $192.00.
[00:18:19.530]Milk loss, of course we know lame cows are not going to
[00:18:23.350]produce nearly as well.
[00:18:25.670]Put a charge of about $170.00 on milk loss
[00:18:29.200]and reproduction at 68.
[00:18:31.980]Of course, the treatment costs.
[00:18:33.836]When it's all said and done, we work our way up toward
[00:18:39.300]a figure of around $500.00.
[00:18:41.690]So from my own way of thinking, when I look at the estimates
[00:18:46.720]of economic loss, $500.00 is a pretty reasonable cost
[00:18:52.560]estimate for clinical lameness.
[00:18:57.250]I had a farmer one time tell me
[00:18:59.870]that when they mentioned, Kim mentioned the master hoof
[00:19:04.670]care program, which is a training program that we do
[00:19:07.513]to help train on-farm trimmers on how to care for foot
[00:19:13.040]problems and trim feet and so forth.
[00:19:17.470]I noticed that this one farmer sent his people
[00:19:21.980]to this program year after year.
[00:19:25.610]I was just curious why he did so.
[00:19:29.630]He said, "Well," he said, "I found it to be very beneficial
[00:19:33.557]"to us in looking at the cost of lameness
[00:19:37.367]"and how this program has benefited by having
[00:19:41.587]"our on-farm care, foot care program in place.
[00:19:46.567]"We found it beneficial to us economically."
[00:19:50.130]He said, "We've been able to reduce
[00:19:51.677]"the cull rate to lameness."
[00:19:54.860]I said "Hm, that's curious."
[00:19:56.410]I said, "Could you show me some of your figures?"
[00:19:59.830]So he did.
[00:20:00.680]What he did, he showed me that before he started
[00:20:03.650]sending people to this particular trimming program,
[00:20:07.870]from 1995-1999,
[00:20:11.530]his cull rate due to lameness was about 4.3%.
[00:20:17.300]I don't know all the details of how he figures all that
[00:20:20.890]in there, but this is how it was reported in his records.
[00:20:26.320]He said after he started sending people to the program
[00:20:30.810]and they started instituting a good on-farm trimming
[00:20:35.470]and foot care program, he said that they reduced their
[00:20:39.750]costs dramatically because they reduced the number
[00:20:43.110]of animals that were culled down to somewhere over 1.25
[00:20:50.801]or three or 4%, went up to about 1.5% in 2001.
[00:20:57.890]Of course I didn't follow it beyond that,
[00:20:59.810]but I could understand the point he was making,
[00:21:02.860]that where he saw the value to him was in the case
[00:21:07.000]of just reducing the number of lame cows
[00:21:09.613]that he had to sell for slaughter.
[00:21:13.140]Now, these figures of course, don't fit very well
[00:21:16.480]for today, but back at the time, the current
[00:21:20.942]market value of dairy replacements was at that time
[00:21:23.900]about 1850, that's $1,850.00.
[00:21:27.550]The salvage value of lame cows was $300.00.
[00:21:32.090]Of course, these figures vary and you could put
[00:21:34.270]your own figures in there, but then look at
[00:21:37.198]the market value minus salvage value and that's how
[00:21:41.150]he came up with the figures that he did here,
[00:21:44.870]which showed that for his herd of 2,118 cows,
[00:21:50.315]4.3% or so was 90 cows.
[00:21:54.110]That was the average cull rate for 1995-99.
[00:21:59.480]He said he subtracted from that 30 cows,
[00:22:03.000]that was what he was culling during the period of time
[00:22:08.530]through 2000 and 2001.
[00:22:11.370]That was 60 cows essentially,
[00:22:13.820]that did not need to be replaced.
[00:22:16.030]He added that up times the replacement value
[00:22:19.900]that we just looked at, he came up with a
[00:22:24.310]value somewhere close to $100,000.00.
[00:22:27.410]Now, you could argue whether how you know,
[00:22:31.630]accurate that is, but I think that one of the things
[00:22:34.210]that we see when we institute foot care programs
[00:22:38.070]and we try to be aggressive in trying to manage
[00:22:42.181]foot problems and lameness disorders on farms,
[00:22:46.120]one of the places we should see an advantage pretty quickly
[00:22:50.400]is in the reduction of cows that need to be lost
[00:22:53.720]or that need to be removed from the herd
[00:22:57.304]for lameness reasons.
[00:22:59.840]Then there's a whole host of other benefits
[00:23:02.240]that are there with respect to reproductive performance,
[00:23:05.936]milk production, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:23:09.400]So I think that it's very easy to justify
[00:23:14.220]an effort toward improving our foot care programs on farms,
[00:23:20.980]just looking at it in extremely simple way.
[00:23:25.520]The economic impact of this is very important.
[00:23:29.650]If you look at this, this is from a UF dairy herd,
[00:23:32.780]the University of Florida's dairy herd many years ago,
[00:23:35.870]we took a look at that again as well, and we used some kinds
[00:23:39.260]of figures that came from some British work by
[00:23:43.744]Esslemont and Peeler, down here on claw disease.
[00:23:48.350]They said that about $422.00 per case,
[00:23:51.180]that's what they estimated the cost to be.
[00:23:54.560]Dermatitis and foot rot, they estimated to be $128.00
[00:23:59.270]per case for a herd of 345 cows,
[00:24:02.780]which is the size of the University of Florida
[00:24:04.760]dairy at the time.
[00:24:05.880]So I just took those and put together,
[00:24:10.410]from their records, of what that cost was for the herd
[00:24:17.150]based on the number of lameness disorders
[00:24:19.800]that the University of Florida dairy was having.
[00:24:23.610]We got a cost of around $58,266.00
[00:24:28.400]of estimated total loss
[00:24:30.750]based on the numbers of cases that
[00:24:34.140]they had with those conditions in that herd.
[00:24:37.940]This was roughly a 30% incidence of lameness.
[00:24:42.070]You could figure this out for yourself very easily,
[00:24:44.370]but the cost, as you see when we multiply that all out
[00:24:49.680]and divide it out, all those things on a 350 cow herd
[00:24:55.110]with a 30% incidence, that was roughly 105 cows
[00:24:59.080]that had lameness in that herd.
[00:25:02.120]When you multiply that out, we see that our costs
[00:25:04.690]were somewhere around that $555.00 range,
[00:25:08.130]which is pretty consistent with the $500.00 per case
[00:25:13.340]per lame cow cost that I shared with you earlier.
[00:25:17.460]So just as a general way, a rule of thumb in looking at
[00:25:21.910]the cost of an individual cow that is lame,
[00:25:24.980]regardless of what that case may be cause by,
[00:25:28.370]you know, claw diseases, foot rot, whatever,
[00:25:33.040]just in a rough, general way, $500.00 per cow,
[00:25:37.830]per lame cow, gives you some rough idea what that's
[00:25:41.070]costing you per lame animal.
[00:25:43.820]Then if you take that and divide that out amongst
[00:25:47.533]the whole herd, in this particular case,
[00:25:51.100]that amounted to $166.00 per cow.
[00:25:56.449]There's a number of ways that you could figure the cost
[00:25:59.220]or estimate the cost of lameness in your herd.
[00:26:02.020]These are extremely simple ways of calculating those things
[00:26:07.010]but they give you a ball park idea
[00:26:10.510]of what the cost of lameness is in your herd.
[00:26:15.851]Those are, I think, just very, very simplistic ways
[00:26:19.490]of looking at it, but based on the work that has been done
[00:26:23.260]by Chuck Guard, as I say, from Cornell and others,
[00:26:28.294]it's pretty consistent that those are pretty accurate
[00:26:32.480]estimates based on the best information that we have
[00:26:36.080]that includes you know, the effect on milk production,
[00:26:39.860]the effect on reproductive performance and so forth.
[00:26:44.450]Now I want to show you another individual study that we did.
[00:26:48.913]Again, this is at University of Florida a few years ago,
[00:26:52.820]but this showed the effect of lameness on milk yield
[00:26:56.037]and dairy cows in a study that we did there,
[00:26:59.130]where we were set up to examine the relationship between
[00:27:03.660]lameness and milk yield in dairy cows.
[00:27:05.790]We had 531, the herd had increased a little bit.
[00:27:09.920]This was the University of Florida dairy
[00:27:13.700]at the time as well.
[00:27:16.540]The cows effected with lameness were classified
[00:27:20.150]into one of three groups.
[00:27:21.770]We just looked at interdigital phlegmon,
[00:27:24.800]or that's foot rots.
[00:27:26.260]We looked at foot wart cows and we also looked at
[00:27:31.320]cows with ulcers and white line disease.
[00:27:33.570]We included those all into one group.
[00:27:37.030]Then we compared the
[00:27:40.810]healthy cows with effected cows and looked at the effects
[00:27:45.770]on milk yield, in particular in this particular study.
[00:27:50.900]We ended up with 167 cows, that's 31% of the cows
[00:27:55.580]that were effected with lameness during the lactation
[00:27:59.870]that we studied.
[00:28:01.530]Claw lesions were effected 60% of the animals.
[00:28:06.000]Digital dermatitis effected 31%.
[00:28:09.521]Foot rot effected 9% of the animals.
[00:28:15.020]But what we noticed when we looked at the milk yield
[00:28:17.650]in these animals was that the foot rot cows
[00:28:20.180]produced 1,885 pounds less milk throughout that
[00:28:25.193]entire lactation.
[00:28:27.530]That was a decrease of 10%.
[00:28:30.590]Very significant decrease, okay.
[00:28:33.920]Much more than we found for claw lesions,
[00:28:36.840]which are also very debilitating conditions,
[00:28:39.560]but cows with claw lesions, that's white line disease
[00:28:42.278]and ulcers, produce 338 pounds less than healthy cows.
[00:28:48.330]The digital dermatitis cows, they seemed to be effected
[00:28:50.570]pretty significantly, although the differences between
[00:28:53.846]those are not actually statistically significant.
[00:28:58.240]They produced a significantly amount less
[00:29:01.124]than healthy cows as well.
[00:29:04.885]But the one that really stood out was this one
[00:29:08.294]with respect to foot rot.
[00:29:09.980]So foot rot, as I said here earlier in the beginning
[00:29:13.550]of our session here, is a very, very important disease
[00:29:18.310]and one that we cannot afford to overlook.
[00:29:21.980]We looked at the economic impact, assuming a milk price
[00:29:25.040]of $16.00 per hundred weight and a decrease on production
[00:29:29.130]of 1,885 pounds per cow, that represented a loss
[00:29:33.010]of $301.00 per cow.
[00:29:37.210]We noticed that what happened in the case of foot rot,
[00:29:40.630]that 80% of the animals that were lame with foot rot
[00:29:45.670]were effected in early lactation and that was the key,
[00:29:49.240]you see, to why we had such significant loss.
[00:29:53.380]It was occurring prior to peak milk yields, pardon me,
[00:29:58.900]and 60% of them were culled throughout and during
[00:30:02.880]the early lactation period.
[00:30:05.160]Claw lesions and the other conditions,
[00:30:08.460]can occur throughout lactation,
[00:30:10.370]but these foot rots occurred primarily in early lactation.
[00:30:15.530]So they were preventing cows from actually reaching
[00:30:19.000]peak milk yield.
[00:30:21.160]The conclusions and clinical relevance is that
[00:30:23.810]the foot rot was associated with a 10% decrease in milk
[00:30:28.930]yield and milk production.
[00:30:31.420]Lame cows with claw lesions or digital dermatitis
[00:30:34.040]produced less milk than healthy cows,
[00:30:36.600]but the difference in this particular study
[00:30:38.730]was not significant.
[00:30:41.890]Clearly, these are very, very important
[00:30:45.940]conditions and some that we really have to be on top of.
[00:30:50.930]Certainly foot rot can have dramatic impact
[00:30:54.120]on cows, particularly because it tends to occur
[00:30:58.720]earlier in lactation as compared
[00:31:01.060]with some of these other conditions.
[00:31:04.410]We can't ignore what kinds of impact there have been
[00:31:08.400]as well, in feedlot cattle.
[00:31:10.250]It's not as well studied as it has been in dairy cattle
[00:31:14.800]over the years, but just look at a couple of studies.
[00:31:17.740]I point out one that's a little close to home
[00:31:19.890]to all of you there.
[00:31:21.310]Was done by Dr. B. Griffin many years ago,
[00:31:24.660]but it's still I think, very valid as I look
[00:31:27.140]at studies since then.
[00:31:31.150]They all kind of look back to Dr. Griffin's work.
[00:31:36.170]He found that lameness in feedlot cattle
[00:31:39.530]tended to be primarily foot problems.
[00:31:41.570]There were a number of upper leg injuries, up to 15%.
[00:31:46.202]There were a number of cattle with septic joints
[00:31:48.832]and also injection site lesions were made out to,
[00:31:54.720]were a significant number of these as well.
[00:31:59.880]But the records on the two million animals
[00:32:02.600]from five western feedlots that they looked at,
[00:32:05.090]they found that lameness was about 16% of the health
[00:32:08.920]problems and accounted for 5% of the deaths.
[00:32:12.490]Now, it doesn't seem to be quite as high as in dairy
[00:32:16.150]cattle, but let's face it, the dairy cattle world
[00:32:19.620]is a little different in terms of how we house cattle
[00:32:22.067]and the intensity of our production systems is such that
[00:32:27.930]you know, 30% of lameness is not all that far out
[00:32:33.130]of range in many cases, when we looked at an incidence
[00:32:36.960]for lameness on dairy farms.
[00:32:41.260]But in general, you know, anywhere from a 10-16%
[00:32:46.310]or so of health problems from lameness in feed yards
[00:32:50.100]is not uncommon.
[00:32:53.000]The lame cattle that he studied accounted for 70%
[00:32:55.800]of all sales of non-performing cattle.
[00:32:58.730]The price of the salvage cattle was only 53%
[00:33:02.263]of original purchase price.
[00:33:05.210]On average, the salvage cattle left 85 days after arrival
[00:33:09.990]and weighed only 10 pounds more than their in weight.
[00:33:14.100]So clearly, there's a huge impact on
[00:33:18.139]feedlot cattle in terms of rate of gain.
[00:33:21.654]That has huge impact on the economic, impact on a feed yard.
[00:33:28.460]The records on these animals he found that from these
[00:33:30.790]five large western feedlots, the total loss per animal
[00:33:34.030]as they calculated all costs up, were $121.00 per animal.
[00:33:39.900]That's a lot of money and that takes the profitability
[00:33:45.177]out of that real fast.
[00:33:47.330]Some other work that's been done in recent time
[00:33:49.748]in Western Canadian feedlots, has found that lameness
[00:33:55.140]tends to be the second most common disease treated.
[00:33:59.720]Of those that were treated in Western Canadian feedlots,
[00:34:03.450]76% of the cases were foot rot.
[00:34:06.690]I would say that's very different than what we find
[00:34:09.090]in most of our U.S. feedlots.
[00:34:10.840]I don't know exactly how to explain that because,
[00:34:14.270]but it's different, okay.
[00:34:16.370]Certainly, draws one to
[00:34:21.500]wonder about why is that the case.
[00:34:25.700]But the others included joint infections, injuries,
[00:34:29.750]and lameness that were due to conditions
[00:34:32.750]where there was no swelling in the foot.
[00:34:36.160]Digital dermatitis was significant.
[00:34:38.350]Toe tip necrosis syndrome or toe abscesses in other words,
[00:34:42.340]are very common disorders as well.
[00:34:46.270]But if you took those figures and based up Dr. Griffin's
[00:34:50.270]work for 1993, they figured the economic loss
[00:34:54.340]per animal in the feedlot to be $1,700.00 per head
[00:34:59.070]for all animals in the yard.
[00:35:00.830]That's a lot.
[00:35:01.663]That's a huge impact.
[00:35:03.230]If Alberta finishes 2.5 million cattle per year,
[00:35:07.840]the feedlot industry looses around 42.5 million dollars
[00:35:12.600]per year due to lameness.
[00:35:15.040]So it is a huge impact in the feedlot industry as well.
[00:35:21.170]It's critically important from an economic welfare
[00:35:24.610]standpoint but also it's important too,
[00:35:27.340]when you look a this, and I think this is a very
[00:35:29.411]interesting statistic, is that lameness was the number one
[00:35:33.780]reason for euthanasia.
[00:35:36.350]I don't know that we have those same kinds of figures
[00:35:38.870]on dairies, but my guess is that lameness is the number one
[00:35:43.320]reason for euthanasia on dairies as well,
[00:35:46.440]whether it's due to a non-ambulatory cow condition
[00:35:50.980]from a downed cow situation or just an extremely lame
[00:35:54.970]cow that cannot be moved on to slaughter
[00:35:57.340]or moved on to a market.
[00:36:01.218]It can be likewise in large dairies,
[00:36:06.010]the same kind of a condition where it ends up being
[00:36:08.710]the number one reason for euthanasia.
[00:36:11.820]In this particular study,
[00:36:14.010]lameness effected 6.1% of the cattle studied,
[00:36:17.550]accounting for 28% of all treated animals
[00:36:20.187]and 49% of all euthanized cattle.
[00:36:24.398]Very, very significant, very, very significant.
[00:36:29.320]The economic impact, just looking at the cost per head
[00:36:32.845]for pharmaceuticals only was 85 cents.
[00:36:36.974]So when you add that up in the entire industry,
[00:36:39.740]you're looking at a huge impact.
[00:36:42.730]One of the things that happens in Canadian feed yards
[00:36:45.435]as well as in U.S. feed yards, is that they're not set up,
[00:36:50.450]they're not designed to really take
[00:36:53.660]an aggressive look at foot problems to find a specific
[00:36:58.400]diagnosis in many cases.
[00:37:00.360]So quite often times animals are treated with systemic
[00:37:03.986]antibiotic therapy for foot condition
[00:37:08.270]or lameness conditions for which is not really
[00:37:15.110]well defined in terms of what that particular problem is.
[00:37:19.370]So that's a very costly way to manage lameness.
[00:37:23.040]It's quite often times not effective because in fact,
[00:37:27.050]about the only condition that does respond to antibiotic
[00:37:31.310]therapy from systemic therapy is gonna be foot rot
[00:37:36.000]or potentially an injury to the foot.
[00:37:39.510]So it is an extremely costly way to try to manage
[00:37:42.550]lameness and quite often times it's not effective.
[00:37:46.680]This is some work from recent time by Terrell and others
[00:37:50.770]at Kansas State University that gave us another view
[00:37:55.758]of how lameness occurs in feed yards.
[00:38:00.449]Here you'll find a very different number of foot rots here.
[00:38:05.250]We're looking at 9% as opposed to 75% of cases
[00:38:09.970]being due to foot rot.
[00:38:11.975]They found that more of the cases that they were dealing
[00:38:14.650]with were 10% were septic joints
[00:38:18.350]or digital sepsis conditions, which are quite often times
[00:38:23.490]a consequence of a prolonged or chronic kind of a condition.
[00:38:28.529]Toe abscesses accounted for 5%.
[00:38:31.170]That's a pretty reasonable rate.
[00:38:33.790]Sole ulcers and abscesses were occurring about 5.4%
[00:38:37.940]of the time.
[00:38:38.950]Laminitis was 4% of the time.
[00:38:42.420]Digital dermatitis, less than 1%, although what I'm hearing
[00:38:47.504]time at this desk, there's a whole lot of problems
[00:38:51.830]with digital dermatitis throughout our feed yard industry.
[00:38:56.300]My guess is that that number is quite higher
[00:39:00.280]for most of the feed yard industry at this time.
[00:39:03.950]But none the less, it gives you a different look
[00:39:06.287]at the kinds of conditions that are there.
[00:39:09.430]As we look at those, I think we can see that really,
[00:39:15.080]the majority of these and it's a very high number here
[00:39:17.790]that are undefined causes of lameness,
[00:39:20.960]I would say that's much less the case in our dairy industry.
[00:39:25.030]I feel that that's an indicator alone right there,
[00:39:29.510]that we're doing a better job in managing these things
[00:39:31.698]because there's not many of our foot problems,
[00:39:35.640]whenever we're looking at them on a daily basis,
[00:39:37.750]with a hoof trimmer or veterinarian or on-farm person
[00:39:41.230]who's well-trained in foot care,
[00:39:44.430]that we don't understand pretty much what the cause
[00:39:47.240]of our lameness disorder is.
[00:39:50.520]So as we look at these things, I think it's quite
[00:39:52.960]interesting that when we look at these figures
[00:39:55.910]we find that there's a significant number of animals
[00:39:59.640]that die or end up being euthanized for lameness
[00:40:02.700]associated reasons.
[00:40:04.043]That is really, really, really costly.
[00:40:08.550]That's the kind of thing that I think our industry,
[00:40:10.940]our feed yard industry has got to get a better handle on
[00:40:14.620]because this is having a huge impact on their bottom line.
[00:40:18.940]I think that's one place where dairies and dairy industry
[00:40:22.440]in general is doing a better job.
[00:40:24.810]We're working hard on lameness
[00:40:27.070]and in most cases, trying to
[00:40:31.730]reduce some of these issues by making sure
[00:40:36.100]that our people are trained and that we're also getting
[00:40:39.820]a foot care person in to work on these things
[00:40:42.824]from time to time before they get too far out of hand.
[00:40:47.460]But this is unfortunately a condition that we see
[00:40:49.730]far too often.
[00:40:50.730]It looks like foot rot, but really what it is
[00:40:53.590]is one sided, you see.
[00:40:55.010]This is only on one side that we see this swelling.
[00:40:58.420]In general, what we're looking at here when we see
[00:41:00.870]those kinds of things is a very complicated foot problem.
[00:41:04.130]It may have been from a sole ulcer
[00:41:06.990]or a white line that went bad.
[00:41:08.480]It could have been from a foot rot that went bad.
[00:41:11.530]But this is where the involvement has gotten into
[00:41:14.120]the joints, it's gotten into the bone
[00:41:15.962]and it's gotten to where it's become a very, very
[00:41:19.340]chronic kind of a problem.
[00:41:21.810]Those are the kinds of things that we need to try
[00:41:24.040]to head off because that ends up leading to chronic lameness
[00:41:28.590]and tremendous impacts on performance in animals.
[00:41:33.590]When we look at these kinds of things, I think we can see
[00:41:36.700]that our feed yard industry is got a ways to go,
[00:41:42.190]I think, in making some of these changes over time.
[00:41:46.480]76% of cases due to foot rot.
[00:41:50.650]That seems incredibly high compared to 9%
[00:41:53.519]in our yards in Kansas.
[00:41:56.700]So there's something there that if those are in fact
[00:42:00.450]all foot rots, that's a very unique situation
[00:42:03.930]that they have there.
[00:42:06.270]But I think the take home from all this is is that
[00:42:10.390]you know, 49% of the cattle that were euthanized
[00:42:17.220]that were lame okay, as compared with respiratory disease,
[00:42:20.920]which only accounted for 10% of animals.
[00:42:24.420]That tells us right here, that lameness is really
[00:42:28.020]a huge factor in the need to euthanize animals
[00:42:32.425]and I don't think it's too far off from being at least,
[00:42:36.810]from a relative standpoint, one of the major causes
[00:42:39.336]for euthanasia on our dairy farms.
[00:42:43.071]Dealing with these earlier, making decisions on them
[00:42:47.070]earlier for early culling purposes, really impacts not only
[00:42:51.270]the welfare of animals but also impacts things
[00:42:55.940]certainly from an economic standpoint as well.
[00:42:59.790]I guess when you look at this thing and I look at
[00:43:02.220]all of this together, it looks like sick cattle will die.
[00:43:05.370]But you see, the lame ones will linger.
[00:43:08.060]They survive and they suffer and that's why that becomes
[00:43:10.269]such an important welfare issue.
[00:43:13.950]It's also why it becomes such a costly one for us.
[00:43:18.499]It's important then, that we keep in mind that
[00:43:22.460]this is the major loss to us when we have to euthanize
[00:43:26.880]animals or when we lose them due to natural death
[00:43:30.200]from a particularly from lameness,
[00:43:32.010]because these are things that in many cases
[00:43:34.310]or most cases, we can fix.
[00:43:37.660]We just need to pay attention to these things,
[00:43:41.171]remove these animals before they're not able to be
[00:43:44.743]sold on to slaughter.
[00:43:48.150]Those are major issues for us to keep in mind.
[00:43:53.430]I think when we look at, again this is from the Canadian
[00:43:58.082]work they return on animals, they found was for healthy
[00:44:02.670]cattle was $690.00 per animal.
[00:44:06.520]Return after the final treatment for cattle
[00:44:08.390]with foot rot was 568.
[00:44:11.470]Back to that 121 figure that we saw that the B. Griffin
[00:44:15.310]found in his studies in the Midwest.
[00:44:18.930]Foot rot in heavy cattle didn't have quite the impact
[00:44:22.750]that it did certainly in our
[00:44:26.390]dairy situation, but nonetheless, very significant.
[00:44:29.730]Injury accounts for many dollars or large dollar loss.
[00:44:35.510]So these are conditions that we can, if we see them
[00:44:39.780]early enough, we can fix 'em.
[00:44:41.380]I'm gonna close right now here right quickly
[00:44:44.040]by just saying that lameness is, and I hope I've been able
[00:44:47.790]to convince you of this, that is is one of the most
[00:44:50.150]costly diseases of dairy and feedlot cattle.
[00:44:53.404]In dairy cattle, it accounts for approximately
[00:44:56.837]$500.00 or greater loss for each animal that's effected.
[00:45:02.730]Whole herd wise, you spread it our in the whole herd,
[00:45:06.410]it's still very, very significant amount of dollar loss,
[00:45:10.030]150 to $200.00 per animal across the herd, effected or not.
[00:45:16.030]Feedlot cattle, well there's a number of figures
[00:45:18.470]we could go with.
[00:45:19.303]I like these and go back to that, $121.00 per head.
[00:45:23.140]That takes a whole lot of the profit out of feeding cattle
[00:45:26.518]for our feed yard operators.
[00:45:29.881]It's important I think, and I think that we can see
[00:45:33.340]very easily, that this has a huge impact
[00:45:36.280]whether it's a dairy or it's a feedlot,
[00:45:40.060]the impact on our economic welfare
[00:45:45.530]is very, very significant.
[00:45:47.670]I'm gonna close it right there.
[00:45:49.100]There's a whole lot more we could say, of course.
[00:45:51.090]There's a whole lot of studies that I haven't gone into
[00:45:53.261]to define these things more carefully,
[00:45:57.040]but lameness effects for diary cattle for our cow calf
[00:46:01.413]industry, it effects their reproductive performance,
[00:46:05.040]their milk production, their ability to get around,
[00:46:08.220]all these things are pretty costly things
[00:46:12.582]for those industries.
[00:46:14.060]Our feedlot cattle of course, it really effects gain.
[00:46:19.000]Very easy to see how these are extremely important issues.
[00:46:24.190]So with that, I think I'll stop.
[00:46:25.810]Kim, I'm gonna turn it back to you and
[00:46:29.810]see if there are any questions we might have out there.
[00:46:34.220]Thank you Dr. Shearer.
[00:46:36.800]I see one question, couple questions that came in
[00:46:39.850]to the chat.
[00:46:41.850]Heidi Carol, from South Dakota State University asks
[00:46:46.630]which disease/disorder is the most difficult
[00:46:50.500]for employees or trimmers to identify.
[00:46:54.510]That's a great, great question.
[00:46:56.820]I think most of our trimmers that are well trained
[00:47:01.890]can identify just most of the conditions.
[00:47:05.770]It's rare that we can't
[00:47:09.610]tag it with either being a claw disorder
[00:47:13.310]or an infectious skin disorder of the foot.
[00:47:16.880]I think probably the hardest ones for trimmers
[00:47:19.720]and even the hardest ones even for veterinarians often times
[00:47:22.050]to sort out are the upper leg injuries
[00:47:25.226]because they can be a little bit more...
[00:47:31.530]Sometimes they're subtle and sometimes they're just
[00:47:34.110]hard to sort out in an animal that size
[00:47:37.700]because it's hard to manipulate all the joints and so forth.
[00:47:42.810]But it could be stifle injuries, it could be hip injuries
[00:47:46.164]and so those can be the hardest ones I think, to sort out.
[00:47:50.440]But most of the foot problems, where people have had
[00:47:54.750]any kind of training at all, really most of the foot
[00:47:58.970]problems I think, can be pretty well sorted out.
[00:48:02.290]There may be a few, but it's a very small percentage
[00:48:04.800]of those that would be
[00:48:09.520]you couldn't figure out what was going on.
[00:48:12.750]One of the things that we train our trimmers to do as well
[00:48:15.690]too is if they need to,
[00:48:18.950]they can't tell where the problem is up above in the leg
[00:48:21.640]or down in the foot, but they know that the animal's
[00:48:24.210]painful and lame,
[00:48:26.000]a lot of times we can anesthetize the foot.
[00:48:29.524]If we anesthetize the foot, turn the cow out,
[00:48:32.740]and she walks better, obviously the problem is in the foot.
[00:48:36.550]We just need to sort that one out a little bit better.
[00:48:40.330]If there's no change essentially,
[00:48:44.040]then obviously the problem is up above.
[00:48:48.050]I think the hardest ones though, as I say,
[00:48:50.200]are gonna be the upper leg injures and upper leg problems.
[00:48:57.200]Our next question comes from Mark Mitch and he asks,
[00:49:01.690]at what point does lying time become an issue
[00:49:04.720]for lameness in dairy cows?
[00:49:07.230]In other words, is there an optimal amount of lying time
[00:49:10.680]to provide good hoof health?
[00:49:14.190]The studies that have been done would say that ideally
[00:49:17.310]the cow is going to be able to lie for 12 to 14 hours a day.
[00:49:22.630]That would be her kind of the normal for her.
[00:49:28.260]That would be ideal.
[00:49:29.600]Now, all of that depends on what else fits into that
[00:49:34.574]daily time budget.
[00:49:37.150]You know, cows have to walk to and from the parlor.
[00:49:41.370]If it's a three time a day milking, some of that is likely
[00:49:45.160]to cut into the normal budget
[00:49:50.240]that this animal would daily 24 hour time budget,
[00:49:53.490]that she would have for lying and resting.
[00:49:56.260]But when you start to get much less than 11-12 hours,
[00:50:01.970]most of the studies start to show
[00:50:04.760]that it starts to increase the degree or the amount
[00:50:08.806]of lameness that we see.
[00:50:10.800]So just in a very rough way okay,
[00:50:14.710]11 hours, 11-12 hours seems like the cut off,
[00:50:18.410]a nice cut off.
[00:50:19.840]When you get much below that, it starts to reflect in
[00:50:25.240]a greater amount of lameness.
[00:50:27.410]Above that tends to be more beneficial
[00:50:32.010]with respect to foot and leg health.
[00:50:38.250]Jacob Post asked what suggestions may you have
[00:50:42.500]about running foot baths?
[00:50:44.400]How often as well as specific products?
[00:50:48.650]Boy, great question, toughest one I always get.
[00:50:53.035]I think first of all that, the primary condition
[00:50:58.240]that we can expect or we would expect to treat
[00:51:01.165]with a foot bath is digital dermatitis or foot warts, right.
[00:51:09.060]There's no real evidence that it's particularly effective
[00:51:13.748]for controlling foot rot, although we often times
[00:51:18.520]will put a foot bath in or start running a foot bath
[00:51:21.780]if we're into an epidemic of let's say, foot rots.
[00:51:25.620]But the reality is is that
[00:51:29.490]probably no real good evidence that I'm aware of
[00:51:33.172]for the benefits of foot baths and managing conditions
[00:51:38.390]like foot rot and it's very difficult
[00:51:41.930]to manage foot warts with foot baths.
[00:51:46.130]But, with what little information that we have,
[00:51:49.880]and there's a variety of commercial products out there
[00:51:52.320]for which there's not a lot of good controlled research on,
[00:51:57.190]so let me just break it down to,
[00:52:00.000]there are three things out there that people use.
[00:52:02.850]One is acidified copper sulfate.
[00:52:05.470]Another is copper sulfate.
[00:52:06.970]Another is maybe formalin.
[00:52:10.930]Formalin and formaldehyde is a hard one to manage
[00:52:15.610]in the wintertime, of course, because cold weather
[00:52:18.710]causes it to separate and break down into paraformaldehyde,
[00:52:24.190]which is totally ineffective.
[00:52:27.980]So copper sulfate tends to be one that many people go to.
[00:52:32.020]It's an astringent that has a drying effect on the foot.
[00:52:37.010]So there is some benefit of course, to that,
[00:52:40.030]with managing hairy heel warts.
[00:52:42.380]But here's what we have learned and some of the studies
[00:52:46.040]we've done in the past in a few years here is,
[00:52:48.950]that digital dermatitis, when you see the classic lesion,
[00:52:52.250]the classic mature or chronic lesion,
[00:52:55.328]those do not respond well no matter
[00:52:58.260]what you put in a foot bath.
[00:53:02.350]You have to understand that one going in
[00:53:04.750]because those don't even respond well when we treat them
[00:53:08.440]aggressively, topically with say tetracycline for example
[00:53:12.820]two or three times in a row.
[00:53:14.531]We've tried that and we've had poor results
[00:53:18.540]to getting a permanent cure from that very aggressive
[00:53:22.780]form of therapy.
[00:53:24.240]It does reduce the pain and that lasts for a while.
[00:53:28.390]But in terms of being a permanent fix it's not.
[00:53:32.420]So what ends up being the benefit or the primary benefit
[00:53:37.270]of digital dermatitis control with a foot bath is
[00:53:41.780]when you treat the extremely early lesions.
[00:53:46.970]When we treat the very, very early lesions
[00:53:50.410]with a foot bath formulation, regardless pretty much,
[00:53:53.750]and ours was with formaldehyde, 3% formaldehyde solution
[00:53:57.850]is what we studied at the time, we had pretty good luck
[00:54:02.090]at controlling the very early lesions.
[00:54:06.420]But we had very poor benefit from treating
[00:54:11.020]the more chronic or the mature type lesions.
[00:54:16.300]Foot baths are not the cure all.
[00:54:19.660]I think they're a necessity, when we're trying to manage
[00:54:23.499]digital dermatitis or foot warts,
[00:54:28.290]but you have to recognize that they're probably not
[00:54:31.670]going to change
[00:54:35.850]mature or chronic lesions to normal skin.
[00:54:40.360]That's probably too big of a
[00:54:46.420]outcome to expect from this.
[00:54:50.110]But if we're looking to try to control the overall
[00:54:53.800]number of conditions within a herd by controlling
[00:54:57.210]the very, very early lesions, I think we can accomplish
[00:55:00.950]something with foot baths when we approach it that way.
[00:55:04.260]'Cause it will control, at best,
[00:55:07.620]it will control some of those very early lesions.
[00:55:13.990]You had mentioned having a foot bath
[00:55:16.750]for the early lesions.
[00:55:18.560]How often do you recommend a foot bath?
[00:55:23.160]So, great question and it's a hard one to answer as well,
[00:55:26.750]but I think as a general rule, if you have a very high
[00:55:32.870]incidence of the disease in the herd,
[00:55:35.640]then you need to run the foot bath probably
[00:55:40.150]just about every day, right, or most every day.
[00:55:43.710]If you are dealing with a situation where your
[00:55:47.142]daily prevalence or your incidence is quite low,
[00:55:50.900]you can possibly get by with running it less frequently.
[00:55:57.745]That's part of it.
[00:56:00.910]I would kind of, there's no real hard fast rules on that,
[00:56:05.520]but that would be my recommendation.
[00:56:08.950]More when you have a lot of problems.
[00:56:11.000]A little less when you don't have quite as much
[00:56:13.730]of the problem.
[00:56:17.690]It costs you to run foot baths
[00:56:19.770]and that's one of the problems with it.
[00:56:22.150]It's also labor intensive.
[00:56:25.720]So I realize all those things, but I think that
[00:56:30.400]that's how I would try to gauge its use,
[00:56:34.770]depending on how severe the problem is in the herd.
[00:56:37.925]Remember also what I said about how to
[00:56:45.380]assess your outcome.
[00:56:47.720]Know that the mature and the chronic lesions
[00:56:50.240]are not gonna respond very well.
[00:56:53.110]But overall and over time, you should reduce the overall
[00:56:58.060]incidence because you're gonna be controlling
[00:57:00.600]the very early lesions, you see,
[00:57:03.480]and preventing them from becoming the mature
[00:57:06.330]and chronic type lesion.
[00:57:10.990]How would a dairy go about treating and handling
[00:57:16.420]animals, so if you have a dairy that already has
[00:57:20.170]the signs of lameness, where a significant number
[00:57:22.840]of their lactating herd is lame from a moderate
[00:57:26.810]to severe basis, how do they go about starting to treat
[00:57:32.120]the animals and reducing their incidences of lameness?
[00:57:38.668]I think the thing they have to do is get a handle
[00:57:41.360]on what is the cause of the lameness, right.
[00:57:45.200]Is it digital dermatitis, which tends to be fairly
[00:57:50.480]prevalent in our herds
[00:57:52.310]and it's a major cause of lameness, of course?
[00:57:55.830]It may be the cause and if we understand that
[00:57:59.237]and if we know that, then we start to you know,
[00:58:04.530]work on a foot bath management program to try to manage,
[00:58:07.616]at least the early lesions and maybe provide some
[00:58:13.390]relief to the discomfort that's occurring with even
[00:58:16.350]the mature and chronic lesions, of course.
[00:58:19.730]But it would still give us some direction as far
[00:58:24.200]as where to focus a lot of our management effort.
[00:58:31.150]If we find that the problems are predominately
[00:58:34.780]claw-related disorders, such as let's say sole ulcers
[00:58:38.990]and white line disease,
[00:58:40.890]then that drives us in a different direction.
[00:58:43.670]That drives us into looking at what's causing
[00:58:49.381]the high number of sole ulcers, for example.
[00:58:53.090]If we have a lot of sole ulcers,
[00:58:55.005]I start to wonder about cow comfort.
[00:58:57.760]Are we overcrowded?
[00:59:00.938]Are cattle getting off of their feet?
[00:59:02.620]Are we forcing them to stand too much?
[00:59:04.530]What are we doing around transition that may be
[00:59:09.350]influencing a higher incidence of this particular condition?
[00:59:15.391]Then I think if you're finding a lot of upper leg injuries,
[00:59:21.370]then obviously you have some slipping and falling
[00:59:23.940]and that also would give you some direction in terms
[00:59:26.920]of where you would want to focus some attention
[00:59:30.040]to sort out why that's occurring.
[00:59:33.980]I think what you kind of have to do is
[00:59:37.490]get working on feet, get somebody working on feet,
[00:59:40.420]a trimmer, veterinarian, a trimmer.
[00:59:45.311]If you're a large herd, it's probably gonna be a trimmer
[00:59:46.900]for sure, but I think you need to get some handle on
[00:59:50.580]what are the predominant cause of lameness in your herd
[00:59:54.110]and then start to focus your attention on why
[00:59:57.570]that's occurring and fix those problems.
[01:00:00.080]'Cause you don't want to continue to just fix feet.
[01:00:03.470]You want to find out why you're having a higher than
[01:00:09.290]normal rate of problems with ulcers or white line disease
[01:00:13.740]or whatever the case might be.
[01:00:20.100]Well thank you Dr. Shearer.
[01:00:22.160]It is 1:00 and so I thank everyone for joining us today
[01:00:26.350]for the Dairy Profitability webinar series.
[01:00:31.270]We have two more webinars coming up.
[01:00:36.320]We have Dr. Victor Cabrera next week.
[01:00:40.280]Then the following week we have Dr. Andrea Beankini
[01:00:46.070]who talking about spores and the impacts of milk quality.
[01:00:52.690]This recording will be available online
[01:00:55.270]at dairy.unl.edu under the webinars tab.
[01:01:01.070]So, thank you again for joining us and we hope you can
[01:01:04.540]join us next week as well.
[01:01:07.370]Thank you very much.

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dairy cattle
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Economic Impact of Lameness

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