The Effects of Lameness on Social and Individual Behavior of Dairy Cows

Abstract

Lameness is one of the most important welfare problems in dairy cattle. Most studies on lameness have focused on wide ranging surveys to identify causal factors, but few have considered the welfare implications of this disorder. In this study, we compared the social and individual behavior of 10 lame cows and 10 nonlame cows. The 20 Holstein-Friesian cows calved in the summer and spent the autumn and winter together with another 36 nonlame cows in a Newton Rigg cubicle house building. The cubicle to cow ratio was 1:1, and wheat straw bedding was provided every day. The investigators fed the cows ad lib a silage-based diet and milked them twice a day, at which time they received adjusted amounts of concentrate. The investigators observed the 2 groups of cows a total of 32 hr to obtain information on social and individual behaviors through scan and behavior sampling. Although lame cows were less likely to start an aggressive interaction, there were no differences in times receiving aggression. No differences were found in the times licking other cows; however, the frequency of times being licked was higher in the lame cows. The lame cows spent more time lying out of the cubicles, had longer total lying times, and spent less time feeding. The behavioral differences seen show that lame cows do not cope as successfully with their environment as do nonlame cows. Also, these results provide useful information on how licking in dairy cows may play a role in alleviating discomfort of other herd members who are in pain or who are sick.

Influence of digital dermatitis and sole ulcer on dairy cow behaviour and milk production

“…In the study of Cook et al (2004b), cows were overstocked, which could have contributed to his results, and Blackie (2009) observed that lame cows were more active and stood more between 1200 and 1500 h compared with the healthy ones. Thus, different results between studies (Hassall et al, 1993;Galindo and Broom, 2002;Walker et al, 2008;Blackie, 2009) may be caused by differences in how the cows were housed, especially with regard to access to comfortable cubicles, as well as when and how often observations were made. In this study, the observations lasted for 4 h/day between the morning and afternoon milking when the cows were, in general, active.…”

“…However, lame cows have been found to lie longer (Galindo and Broom, 2002;Walker et al, 2008;Blackie, 2009) and spend more time lying outside the cubicles and less time eating than nonlame cows (Galindo and Broom, 2002). Hassall et al (1993) found that lame cows on pasture entered the milking parlour later, were more restless during milking and ruminated significantly more when lying than when standing compared with healthy herd mates.…”

Assessing the welfare impact of foot disorders in dairy cattle by a modeling approach

“…It is known that with very severe lameness, like with IP, the animals are not able to perform dairy cow-specific behaviors. However, it is not known at which pain intensity (represented by locomotion score as lameness is a behavioral expression of pain; Galindo and Broom, 2002) or combinations of pain intensity and duration, behaviors are not performed anymore and what the (long term) consequences are for the dairy cow. As there is no objective method to assess welfare impact and literature did not provide enough information, the use of experts in the weighing of pain and duration could be useful to make an estimation.…”

“…Therefore, pain can be assumed to be a good indicator to assess welfare impact. The behavioral expressions of this pain are tender walking and lameness (Galindo and Broom, 2002), and locomotion scoring is the most commonly used instrument to assess the pain associated with foot disorders (Flower et al, 2008). Locomotion scores can be correlated with the severity of foot lesions (Whay et al, 1997;Winckler and Willen, 2001;O'Callaghan et al, 2003), and therefore will be used as a proxy of pain in this study.…”

“…Foot disorders, which are the main causes of dairy cow lameness, are considered to have a major impact on the welfare of dairy cattle (Galindo and Broom, 2002;Algers et al, 2009) and cause economic losses for the dairy farmer (Bruijnis et al, 2010). These consequences are mainly because of the pain caused by foot disorders, which likely affects the locomotion of the cow (Flower and Weary, 2009).…”