Lameness in a dairy herd: Should the farmer really need an incentive?

摘要

One of our clients recently asked for advice and help in reducing the incidence of lameness in his dairy herd. This is a family-run farm which has 150 milking Holstein cows on one unit and rears all the young stock on a second nearby holding. All thebull calves are reared until 12 months of age and all the females are kept in the herd until they have calved, when a selection is made for herd replacements, the remainder being sold in the open market.The farm staff consists of two brothers and the sonof one of them. Over the past two years, the herd has expanded to its present size and, during the previous six months, the brothers had gained a contract to supply fresh milk to one of the larger national supermarkets. One of the conditions of the newsupermarket contract was that attention should be given to monitoring lameness in the herd, using regular, quarterly mobility scoring. It was during this process that the farmers realised the extent of lameness within their herd.