Preventive medicine and health planning are the cornerstones of farm animal veterinary practice. Genetic selection is preventive medicine in its purest form – by choosing to breed animals with a low...
Several automated methods of lameness detection are available for use in cattle, typically using one (or a combination) of three methodologies (Table 1)..
October 2022 saw the launch of the new Lantra-approved Cattle Foot Health courses to help vets and foot trimmers teach best foot trimming practice to farmers. The author reflects on what she hopes to...
Understanding and researching lameness requires accurate measurement of lameness status. In addition to its value for research, measuring the number of lame goats on a farm is useful for identifying...
Several randomised controlled trials have investigated the efficacy of NSAIDs as part of different treatment regimens using a range of outcome measures. A systematic literature review has recently...
Digital dermatitis is a polymicrobial infection, with many hundreds of bacterial species found in lesions (Krull et al, 2014; Zinicola et al, 2015). Changes in bacterial populations and relative...
In cattle digit amputation is indicated for septic pedal arthritis (infection of the distal interphalangeal joint) (Pejsa et al, 1998; Desrochers et al, 2008), pedal osteitis (infection of P3), toe...
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...
Several other foot diseases may occasionally be encountered, for which further reading on diagnosis and treatment is available in Winter (2004a and 2004b). In summary these conditions include:.
Despite the well documented economic and welfare impacts of lameness, one of the fundamental difficulties continues to be how the farm team define and recognise the behavioural changes associated with...
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...