Early detection and prompt effective treatment of lameness in dairy cattle

Pedersen, Sara; Wilson, J. P.

doi:10.12968/live.2021.26.3.115

Cited by 17 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Research shows that, in addition to its major impact on dairy cow welfare [ 1 , 2 , 3 ], lameness is also responsible for substantial economic losses due to treatment costs [ 4 ], reduced milk production [ 5 , 6 , 7 ] and reproductive performance [ 8 , 9 , 10 ], and increased culling [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Therefore, early detection and treatment of lame cows are vital to minimise the pain and discomfort associated with lameness [ 15 , 16 ] and to reduce the risk of irreversible claw damage [ 17 ]. Thus, early intervention improves welfare and decreases the economic impact of lameness but requires active lameness detection.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating Alternatives to Locomotion Scoring for Lameness Detection in Pasture-Based Dairy Cows in New Zealand: Infra-Red Thermography

Werema

Laven

Mueller

et al. 2021

Animals

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Lameness in cattle is a complex condition with huge impacts on welfare, and its detection is challenging for the dairy industry. The present study aimed to evaluate the association between foot skin temperature (FST) measured using infrared thermography (IRT) and locomotion scoring (LS) in dairy cattle kept at pasture. Data were collected from a 940-cow dairy farm in New Zealand. Cows were observed at two consecutive afternoon milkings where LS was undertaken at the first milking (4-point scale (0–3), DairyNZ). The next day, cows were thermally imaged from the plantar aspect of the hind feet using a handheld T650sc forward-looking infrared camera (IRT). The association between FST and locomotion score was analysed using a generalised linear model with an identity link function and robust estimators. ROC curves were performed to determine optimal threshold temperature cut-off values by maximising sensitivity and specificity for detecting locomotion score ≥ 2. There was a linear association between individual locomotion scores and FST. For mean temperature (MT), each one-unit locomotion score increase was associated with a 0.944 °C rise in MT. Using MT at a cut-off point of 34.5 °C produced a sensitivity of 80.0% and a specificity of 92.4% for identifying cows with a locomotion score ≥ 2 (lame). Thus, IRT has a substantial potential to be used on-farm for lameness detection. However, automation of the process will likely be necessary for IRT to be used without interfering with farm operations.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating Alternatives to Locomotion Scoring for Lameness Detection in Pasture-Based Dairy Cows in New Zealand: Infra-Red Thermography

Werema

Laven

Mueller

et al. 2021

Animals

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“…Sole ulcers are particularly time consuming and expensive to treat ( Charfeddine and Pérez-Cabal, 2017 ; Dolecheck et al, 2018 ), with high rates of recurrence observed in consecutive lactations ( Enevoldsen et al, 1991 ; Foditsch et al, 2016 ; Charfeddine and Pérez-Cabal, 2017 ). One of the primary goals of sole lesion treatment is to minimize the severity and duration of inflammation because inflammation may be associated with new bone development on the distal phalanx and an increased risk of recurrence ( Lischer et al, 2002b ; Newsome et al, 2016 ; Pedersen and Wilson, 2021 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic parameters of sole lesion recovery in Holstein cows

Barden

Anagnostopoulos

Griffiths

et al. 2023

Journal of Dairy Science

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Sole hemorrhage and sole ulcers, referred to as sole lesions, are important causes of lameness in dairy cattle. The objective of this study was to estimate the genetic parameters of a novel trait reflecting how well cows recovered from sole lesions and the genetic correlation of this trait with overall susceptibility to sole lesions. A cohort of Holstein dairy cows was prospectively enrolled on 4 farms and assessed at 4 timepoints: before calving, immediately after calving, in early lactation, and in late lactation. At each timepoint, sole lesions were recorded at the claw level by veterinary surgeons and used to define 2 binary traits: (1) susceptibility to sole lesions—whether animals were affected with sole lesions at least once during the study or were unaffected at every assessment, and (2) sole lesion recovery—whether sole lesions healed between early and late lactation. Animals were genotyped and pedigree details extracted from the national database. Analyses were conducted with BLUPF90 software in a single-step framework; genetic parameters were estimated from animal threshold models using Gibbs sampling. The genetic correlation between both traits was approximated as the correlation between genomic estimated breeding values, adjusting for their reliabilities. A total of 2,025 animals were used to estimate the genetic parameters of sole lesion susceptibility; 44% of animals recorded a sole lesion at least once during the study period. The heritability of sole lesion susceptibility, on the liability scale, was 0.25 (95% highest density interval = 0.16–0.34). A total of 498 animals were used to estimate the genetic parameters of sole lesion recovery; 71% of animals had recovered between the early and late lactation assessments. The heritability of sole lesion recovery, on the liability scale, was 0.27 (95% highest density interval = 0.02–0.52). The approximate genetic correlation between each trait was −0.11 (95% confidence interval = −0.20 to −0.02). Our results indicate that recovery from sole lesions is heritable. If this finding is corroborated in further studies, it may be possible to use selective breeding to reduce the frequency of chronically lame cows. As sole lesion recovery appears to be weakly genetically related to sole lesion susceptibility, successful genetic improvement of sole lesion recovery would benefit from selection on this trait directly.

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“…2,3 Early detection and timely treatment are essential to mitigate the impacts of lameness. 4 The current mainstream method of diagnosis is mobility scoring based on visual assessment of gait by trained observers. 5 However, pain experienced by lame cows is often masked by their instinctive stoicism, which makes it difficult to diagnose the disease before the appearance of clinical signs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Fig 4. Evaluation of the prediction accuracies of four ML models (A) random forest (RF), (B) elastic net, (C) support vector machine (SVM), (D) partial least squares (PLS) using leave-oneout cross validation procedure.…”

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confidence: 99%