Cow comfort and lameness on British Columbia dairy farms

Cow comfort and lameness on British Columbia dairy farms
K. Ito, A. Barrientos, M.A.G. von Keyserlingk, D.M. Weary
Cow comfort plays an important role in the prevention of lameness. The first step in
exploring this relationship is to determine the current status of cow comfort and
lameness on commercial dairy farms in British Columbia.
To do this, we recorded the lying time and locomotion score (1 = sound to 5 = severely lame) of
2033 high producing cows from 43 farms (>70 milking cows, freestall housing, TMR/PMR).
How many cows are lame?
80
13
70
12
11
10
9
8
25
Proportion of cows (%)
14
Proportion of lame
cows (%)
Lying time (h/d)
How long do cows lie down?
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
7
Farm
12:56
Highest
11:23
11:04
Average
9:28
(hr:min)
Lowest
4
Lowest
17
29
Average
sound
lame
20
15
10
5
0
4
Farm
10:38
Does lameness relate to
lying time?
35
71 (%)
Highest
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Lying time (h/d)
If a cow has a very high (>14 h/d) or low (<9 h/
d) lying time, she is more likely to be lame!
Designing and managing housing with cow comfort in mind can reduce the risk of lameness. Many farms in BC
achieved remarkable success in both cow comfort and lameness prevention.
Funding was provided by: Westgen Endowement Fund, Investment Agriculture Foundation of BC, Artex Barn Solutions Ltd., Clearbrook Grain and Milling Co. Ltd., Nutritech Solutions Ltd., Ritchie-Smith Feeds Inc., and Unifeed.