Effectiveness of different footbathing frequencies using copper sulfate in the control of digital dermatitis in dairy cows

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to test the effectiveness of different footbathing frequencies using CuSO₄ in the control of digital dermatitis (DD) in groups of dairy cows with low and high DD prevalence in an endemically infected herd. During the study, groups of cows walked through allocated footbath solutions after milking on 4 consecutive milkings each week, 2 wk, or monthly, depending on treatment. The footbath solutions were changed either after 200 cows had passed through the footbath or within 24 h. All cows were scored weekly during milking for DD lesion stage on the hind feet using a 5-point nominal scale. A transition grade was assigned based on whether the DD lesions improved (1) or deteriorated or did not improve (0) from week to week, and was averaged for all cows in the group. Furthermore, from the longitudinal study data, all transitions between different DD lesion stages between the different time points were used in a discrete, first-order Markov chain (state transition matrix) model. In experiment 1, 70 Holstein-Friesian cows with DD lesions present on at least one of their hind feet were allocated to 1 of 2 footbath treatments for 14 wk: (1) 5% CuSO₄ each week or (2) 5% CuSO₄ every 2 wk. At the end of the study, no active DD lesions were observed in cows in either treatment group, but significantly more cows had no DD lesions (0.48 ± 0.097 vs. 0.24 ± 0.094) and fewer cows had lesions in the healing stage (0.52 ± 0.104 vs. 0.77 ± 0.090) for the weekly compared with the 2-wk footbathing regimen. The number of active DD lesions that the transition matrix model predicted over time was 3 and 8% for weekly and every 2 wk footbathing treatments, respectively. In experiment 2, 64 cows with no DD lesions on either of their hind feet were allocated to 1 of 2 footbath treatment regimens for 14 wk: (1) 5% CuSO₄ every 2 wk or (2) 5% CuSO₄ each month. At the end of the trial, significantly more cows had no DD (0.80 ± 0.088 vs. 0.65 ± 0.102) and fewer cows had DD lesions in the healing stage (0.20 ± 0.088 vs. 0.35 ± 0.102) in the every 2 wk regimen than in the monthly footbathing regimen. The number of active DD lesions that the transition matrix model predicted over time was low for both footbathing interventions (1 and 4%, respectively). Increasing the interval between footbaths does not appear the most appropriate mechanism for reducing CuSO₄ usage.

Missing pieces of the puzzle to effectively control digital dermatitis

“…Proper footbath design has been evaluated and is based on dimensions (Cook, Rieman, Gomez, & Burgi, 2012;Logue, Gibert, Parkin, Thomson, & Taylor, 2012), frequency of use, product used and appropriate concentration of solution (Relun et al, 2012;Speijers et al, 2010Speijers et al, , 2012Teixeira, Machado, Caixeta, Pereira, & Bicalho, 2010). When used, the footbath must be managed to ensure sufficient solution is consistently available to achieve full immersions of hooves of all four feet .…”

Efficacy of a commercial glutaraldehyde footbath product for the control of bovine digital dermatitis

“…findings of this study some other intervention studies found an increase of DD prevalence after a longer period of successful footbath usage (1,3,18,19,22). Possibly the duration of our study was too short to show this effect and a repetition of the study with a longer period of footbathing would be reasonable.…”

Short communication: Efficacy of copper sulfate hoof baths against digital dermatitis—Where is the evidence?

“…However, this effect was only seen in 1 of 3 possible combinations of DD lesion scorings. Speijers et al (2012) evaluated the effect of different hoof-bathing frequencies and found that more frequent use of copper sulfate hoof baths resulted in more cows without DD lesions. Also in this study severe cases of DD were treated topically with antibiotics.…”

“…Only the study of Speijers et al (2010) had an evaluation of the efficacy of copper sulfate (and hypochlorite) as the primary objective. In a follow-up study the same group later evaluated the effect of different treatment frequencies (Speijers et al, 2012).…”