Figure 1. Improving foot health includes having a thorough understanding of environmental and management factors. The Healthy Feet Programme gives structure for veterinary surgeons intending to make environmental assessments for cows in all systems, whether housed, as here, or grazing, or mixed.

Developments in managing dairy cow foot health

While lameness has been named as the number one issue by the UK's Ruminant Health and Welfare Group, there are other stake-holder groups that also have an important influence. One conse-quence of...

Figure 2. Mobility scoring is not required to find mobility score 3 cows, such as this one which is obviously lame in her back left foot (reluctance to bear weight). However, this herd had an overall lameness prevalence of 28%, predominantly mobility score 2, and this could only be ascertained by carefully observing all of the cows walking on a firm surface.

Perceptions of lameness in dairy herds

Around 30–32% of all adult dairy cows are lame at any one time (Atkinson and Fisher, 2013; Griffiths et al, 2018; Randall et al, 2019). That equates to 560 000 cows in GB being lame and therefore in...