Associations between biosecurity practices and bovine digital dermatitis in Danish dairy herds

Abstract

The relationship between biosecurity and digital dermatitis (DD) was evaluated in 8,269 cows from a convenience sample of 39 freestall dairy herds. The hypothesis was that poor implementation of biosecurity was associated with higher within-herd prevalence of DD. All lactating cows were scored as negative or positive for DD at the hind legs during milking in the milking parlor. Information about biosecurity was obtained through questionnaires addressed to farmers, on-farm observations, and information from the Danish Cattle Database (www.seges.dk). These assessment tools covered potential infection sources of DD pathogens to susceptible cows (e.g., via animals, humans, manure, vehicles, equipment, and facilities). External and internal biosecurity measures were explanatory variables in 2 separate logistic regression models, whereas within-herd DD prevalence was the outcome. Overall DD prevalence among cows and herds were 24 and 97%, respectively; the within-herd DD prevalence ranged from 0 to 56%. Poor external biosecurity measures associated with higher prevalence of DD were recent animal purchase, access to pasture, lack of boots available for visitors, farm staff working at other dairy farms as well, hoof trimming without a professional attending, and animal transporters having access to cattle area. For internal biosecurity, higher DD prevalence were associated with infrequent hoof bathing, manure scraping less than 8 times a day, manure removal direction from cows to heifers, animal pens' exit without water hoses, manure-handling vehicle used in other activities, and water troughs contaminated with manure. These findings showed that improvements on biosecurity may be beneficial for controlling DD in dairy herds. The study is relevant for farmers facing problems with DD, as well as hoof trimmers, advisors, and veterinarians, who can use the results for optimized recommendations regarding biosecurity in relation to DD. Furthermore, our results might be considered by future studies investigating DD pathogen reservoirs and transmission routes.

Bovine digital dermatitis in Victoria, Australia

“…This is not in accordance with a previous study that concluded the opposite; Firmicutes and Actinobacteria are predominant in samples of healthy cows. One OTU classified as Proteobacteria was found to be decreased in differential abundance in DD lesions, which is in accordance with a previous research among Danish cattle (Table ). Staphylococcus was increased in relative abundance in the samples of active lesions (Figure ), this is due to sample 15 and 16 (Figure ), which contained relatively high amounts of this bacterium.…”

“…DD is widespread around the World. It is reported in various countries in Europe and North and South America. Affected herds are also reported in countries such as Israel, Japan and Iran.…”

Dairy farmers’ decision‐making to implement biosecurity measures: A study of psychosocial factors

“…The implementation of biosecurity measures can improve animal health (Oliveira, Sørensen, & Thomsen, 2017) and animal welfare (Barkema et al, 2015) and therefore increase productivity in dairy farms (Postma et al, 2016a). In addition, an association has been observed between higher biosecurity and a reduction in antibiotic use (Laanen et al, 2013;Postma et al, 2016b).…”

The complex relationship between welfare and reproduction in cattle

“…Potential deleterious interrelationships between genetic traits should also not be overlooked; historically, genetic selection for certain traits (e.g., milk production) has resulted in greater health and welfare issues, such as Weaver Syndrome in Brown Swiss cattle (Hoeschele & Meinert, ). Management practices also play an important role to reduce diseases such as bedding effects on clinical and subclinical mastitis (Green, Bradley, Medley, & Browne, ; Ramirez et al., ), hygiene on digital dermatitis (Oliveira, Sorensen, & Thomsen, ) or more generally transition cow diseases (Daros, Hotzel, Bran, LeBlanc, & von Keyserlingk, ). Hence, farmers should not only rely exclusively on genetic selection to improve welfare but should also always strive to incorporate best management practices.…”