Lameness is one of the most significant endemic disease problems facing the dairy industry. Claw horn lesions (principally sole hemorrhage, sole ulcer, and white line disease) are some of the most prevalent conditions. Despite the fact that thousands of animals are treated for these conditions every year, experimental evidence is limited on the most effective treatment protocols. A randomized, positively controlled clinical trial was conducted to test the recovery of newly lame cows with claw horn lesions. Animals on 5 farms were locomotion scored every 2wk. Cows were eligible for recruitment if they had 2 nonlame scores followed by a lame score and had a claw horn lesion on a single claw of a single foot. Following a therapeutic trim, enrolled cows were randomly allocated to 1 of 4 treatments: treatment 1-no further treatment (positive control; TRM), treatment 2-trim plus a block on the sound claw (TB), treatment 3-trim plus a 3-d course of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) ketoprofen (TN), treatment 4-trim plus a block plus ketoprofen (TBN). The primary outcome measure was locomotion score 35d after treatment, by an observer blind to treatment group. Descriptive statistics suggested that treatment groups were balanced at the time of enrollment, that is, randomization was successful. Based on a sound locomotion score (score 0) 35d after treatment, the number of cures was 11 of 45 (24.4%) for TRM, 14 of 39 (35.9%) for TB, 12 of 42 (28.6%) for TN, and 23 of 41 (56.1%) for TBN. The difference between TBN and TRM was significant. To test for confounding imbalances between treatment groups, logistic regression models were built with 2 outcomes, either sound (score 0) or nonlame (score 0 or 1) 35d after treatment. Compared with TRM, animals that received TBN were significantly more likely to cure to a sound outcome. Farm, treatment season, lesion diagnosis, limb affected, treatment operator, and stage of lactation were included in the final models. Our work suggests that lameness cure is maximized with NSAID treatment in addition to the common practices of therapeutic trimming and elevation of the diseased claw using a block when cows are newly and predominantly mildly lame.
Grazing and ruminating are the most important behaviours for ruminants, as they spend most of their daily time budget performing these. Continuous surveillance of eating behaviour is an important means for monitoring ruminant health, productivity and welfare. However, surveillance performed by human operators is prone to human variance, time-consuming and costly, especially on animals kept at pasture or free-ranging. The use of sensors to automatically acquire data, and software to classify and identify behaviours, offers significant potential in addressing such issues. In this work, data collected from sheep by means of an accelerometer/gyroscope sensor attached to the ear and collar, sampled at 16 Hz, were used to develop classifiers for grazing and ruminating behaviour using various machine learning algorithms: random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), k nearest neighbour (kNN) and adaptive boosting (Adaboost). Multiple features extracted from the signals were ranked on their importance for classification. Several performance indicators were considered when comparing classifiers as a function of algorithm used, sensor localisation and number of used features. Random forest yielded the highest overall accuracies: 92% for collar and 91% for ear. Gyroscope-based features were shown to have the greatest relative importance for eating behaviours. The optimum number of feature characteristics to be incorporated into the model was 39, from both ear and collar data. The findings suggest that one can successfully classify eating behaviours in sheep with very high accuracy; this could be used to develop a device for automatic monitoring of feed intake in the sheep sector to monitor health and welfare.
A positively controlled, randomised controlled trial (RCT) was undertaken to test recovery of cows with claw horn lesions resulting in lameness of greater than two weeks duration. Cows on seven commercial farms were mobility scored fortnightly and selected by lameness severity and chronicity. Study cows all received a therapeutic trim then random allocation of: no further treatment (trim only (TRM)), plastic shoe (TS) or plastic shoe and NSAID (TSN). Recovery was assessed by mobility score at 42 (±4) days post treatment by an observer blind to treatment group. Multivariable analysis showed no significant effect of treatment with an almost identical, low response rate to treatment across all groups (Percentage non-lame at outcome: TRM – 15 per cent, TS – 15 per cent, TSN – 16 per cent). When compared with results of a similar RCT on acutely lame cows, where response rates to treatment were substantially higher, it can be concluded that any delay in treatment is likely to reduce the rate of recovery, suggesting early identification and treatment is key. Thirty-eight per cent of animals treated in this study were lame on the contralateral limb at outcome suggesting that both hindlimbs should be examined and a preventive or if necessary a therapeutic foot trim performed when lameness is identified particularly if the duration of lameness is unknown.
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