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Cattle Lameness
At the end of March, Mark attended the inaugural Cattle
Lameness Conference at Nottingham Veterinary School.
It was well attended by vets, scientists, nutritionalists
and advisors. The day started with a presentation by
Laura Green, a scientist from Warwick University, who
headed up a three year lameness survey in 50 farms across
the country (one of which was one of our clients). She
presented various risk factors for increasing lameness
in dairy herds, which often raised more questions than
answers. One of which was farms who hired foot trimmers
had more lameness than those that didn’t. There
could be a few explanations for this; those with little
lameness didn’t see the need to employ a foot trimmer,
some foot trimmers have poor technique i.e. they over
trim, or immediate attention was not given to the lame
cow because ‘the foot trimmer is coming next week
and he’ll sort it out’.
Milk records showed that the milk yield was depressed
several weeks or even months before lameness was treated.
This suggests that the disease had been going on for
a long time before treatment was given. It was suggested
that treatment should be given earlier than is occurring
at the moment. i.e. don’t just treat the lame cows,
treat those that are ever so slightly lame before their
condition develops any further.
Microbiologists from Liverpool University appeared
to have established the cause of digital dermatitis
(DD). It is a bacterium called Treponema which is repeatedly
found in foot lesions. They were unable to find it anywhere
else and so conclude that the reservoir of disease within
a herd is the feet of infected cows rather than the
environment. Interestingly, Treponema has not been found
in ulcers that occur at the front of cow’s udders.
The identical bacterium has been found in lesions of
contagious ovine digital dermatitis (CODD), so it appears
that CODD and DD are the same disease in different species.
Treatment advice has not changed, but it is still interesting
that Treponema are more sensitive to Penicillin than
to Lincospectin. Although a vaccine is a long way off,
identification of the bacteria that cause DD is a step
in the right direction.
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