A higher risk of being lame was found for the presence of claw overgrowth , the first 120 days in milk , larger herd sizes , and increasing parity .
Background Lameness in dairy cows has been an ongoing concern of great relevance to animal welfare and productivity in modern dairy production .
Many studies have examined associations between various factors related to housing , management , and the individual animal and the occurrence of lameness .
The objective of this systematic review was to answer the research question “ what are risk factors associated with lameness in dairy cows that are housed in free stall barns or tie stall facilities ” .
Furthermore , we performed a synthesis of current evidence on certain risk factors by means of a meta- analysis to illustrate the strength of their association with bovine lameness .
Temporal associations between low body condition, lameness and milk yield in a UK dairy herd.
Previous work has hypothesised that cows in low body condition become lame . We tested this in a prospect i ve longitudinal study . Body condition score ( BCS ) , causes of lameness and milk yield were collected from a 600-cow herd over 44-months . Mixed effect binomial models and a continuous outcome model were used to investigate the associations between lameness , BCS and milk yield . In total , 14,320 risk periods were obtained from 1137 cows . There were 1510 lameness treatments : the most common causes of lameness were sole ulcer ( SU ) ( 39 % ) , sole haemorrhage ( SH ) ( 13 % ) , digital dermatitis ( DD ) ( 10 % ) and white line disease ( WLD ) ( 8 % ) . These varied by year and year quarter . Body condition was scored at 60-day intervals . BCS ranged from 1 to 5 with a mean of 2.5 , scores were higher in very early lactation but varied widely throughout lactation ; approximately 45 % of scores were < 2.5 . The key finding was that BCS<2.5 was associated with an increased risk of treatment for lameness in the following 0 - 2 months and > 2 - 4 months for all causes of lameness and also specifically for SU/WLD lameness . BCS<2.5 was associated with an increased risk of treatment for SH in the following 0 - 2 months but not > 2 - 4 months . There was no such association with DD . All lameness , SU/WLD , SH and DD were significantly more likely to occur in cows that had been lame previously , but the effect of BCS was present even when all repeat cases of lameness were excluded from the analysis . Milk yield was significantly higher and fell in the month before treatment in cows lame with SU/WLD but it was not significantly higher for cows that were treated for DD compared with non-lame cows . These findings support the hypothesis that low BCS contributes to the development of horn related claw lameness but not infectious claw diseases in dairy cows . One link between low BCS and lameness is a thin digital cushion which has been proposed as a trigger for claw horn disease . Cows with BCS 2 produced more milk than cows with BCS 2.5 , however , this was only approximately 100 kg difference in yield over a 305-day lactation . Given the increased risk of lameness in cows with BCS 2 , the direct costs of lameness and the small variability in milk yield by BCS , preventing cows from falling to BCS<2.5 would improve cow welfare and be economically beneficial
A higher risk of being lame was found for the presence of claw overgrowth , the first 120 days in milk , larger herd sizes , and increasing parity .
Background Lameness in dairy cows has been an ongoing concern of great relevance to animal welfare and productivity in modern dairy production .
Many studies have examined associations between various factors related to housing , management , and the individual animal and the occurrence of lameness .
The objective of this systematic review was to answer the research question “ what are risk factors associated with lameness in dairy cows that are housed in free stall barns or tie stall facilities ” .
Furthermore , we performed a synthesis of current evidence on certain risk factors by means of a meta- analysis to illustrate the strength of their association with bovine lameness .