Association of abnormal hind-limb postures and back arch with gait abnormality in dairy cattle

Abstract

Detection of lameness in individual cows is important for the prompt treatment of this painful and production-limiting disease. Current methods for lameness detection involve watching cows walk for several strides. If clinical signs predictive of lameness could be observed more conveniently, as cows are undergoing regularly scheduled examinations while standing, detection levels could increase. The objective of this study was to assess the association between postures observed while cows are standing in stanchions and clinical lameness evaluated by locomotion scoring, and to evaluate the observation of these postures as a test for lameness. The study included 1,243 cows from 4 farms. Cows were observed while standing in stanchions for regularly scheduled management procedures and the presence of arched back and cow-hocked, wide-stance, and favored-limb postures were recorded. The same cows were locomotion-scored as they exited the milking parlor. The proportion of cows observed with arched back and cow-hocked and favored-limb postures increased with increasing severity of lameness (higher locomotion score) but did not increase for the wide-stance posture. For the presence of these postures as a test for lameness (locomotion score ≥3), sensitivity and specificity were 0.63 and 0.64 for back arch, 0.54 and 0.57 for cow hocks, and 0.05 and 0.98 for favored limb. Back-arched, cow-hocked, and favored limb postures were associated with lameness but were not highly sensitive or specific as diagnostic tests. However, observation of back arch may be useful to identify cows needing further examination.

Experimentally induced subclinical mastitis: are lipopolysaccharide and lipoteichoic acid eliciting similar pain responses?

“…Restlessness [5], apathy [22] and wide hind limb stance [17] have been previously reported in bovine mastitis. Absence of interactive behavior and response to food were included as general sickness indicators [2], while presence of back arch, reported in bovine affected by lameness [30] and metritis [31], had been observed to occur in clinical mastitis cases and was therefore included in the scoring system. Reactivity to back palpation was expected to potentially occur in painful mastitis as a form of secondary hyperalgesia and muscle hypersensitivity due to postural abnormalities.…”

Invited review: Animal-based indicators for on-farm welfare assessment for dairy goats

“…The sensitivity of the scoring system may vary across species. In goats, a maximum of 4 levels has been adopted by Anzuino et al (2010), whereas in cattle scales up to 5 (e.g., Thomsen et al, 2008;Hoffman et al, 2014;Ito et al, 2014;Kougioumtzis et al, 2014) or 6 (e.g., Bell et al, 2009) levels have been used.…”

Lameness detection in dairy cattle: single predictor v. multivariate analysis of image-based posture processing and behaviour and performance sensing

“…This suggestion is in line with earlier studies, which showed that back curvature was one of the main indicators for locomotion scoring (Sprecher et al, 1997;Van Nuffel et al, 2009). Back curvature is also considered to be a reliable measure for lameness classification (Blackie et al, 2013;Hoffman et al, 2014).…”

“…Back curvature can be extracted from images by different feature variables, such as an inverse radius Viazzi et al, 2014), different curvature angles ) and a back posture measurement (BPM) . The strong relation between back arch and gait abnormality is proven (Sprecher et al, 1997;Blackie et al, 2013;Hoffman et al, 2014).…”