Lameness
Transcript of Select Sires' Reproductive Moment Program
on DairyLine Radio Which Aired April 20, 2006
With Ray Nebel,
Senior Reproduction and Herd Management Specialist, Select Sires Inc.

Ray, this week you’re talking about how lameness affects reproduction.

That’s right, Bill. A lot of times we think of lameness as it affects milk production or overall health of the cow. But doesn’t necessarily have to be cows that are not walking, that are totally lame. But we’re going to be talking about a similar to body-condition scoring, which is a lameness scoring system that cows that are not comfortable walking, it interferes with their normal reproductive process.

So how do we go about scoring this for lameness?

Ironically, the lameness scoring system is a one to five score similar to body condition that’s one to five. So a cow that’s a one has no outward indication to being lame at all. And a cow that’s a five is obviously impaired as far as walking. So the cow that we’re really looking for are the threes and fours; cows that we’d really have to study a little bit to say that they are lame. They’re not the obvious lame cows, but it gives us an indication that something is going on in the herd that’s making the cows uncomfortable and affecting the hoof health of that herd. Cows that are showing lameness scores of threes and fours that are obviously not lame, what happens is, watching them walk, their gait, they have a hunch-back or a hump-back when they walk. So when they walk, they don’t have a full stride. How that affects reproduction is, those cows are not as comfortable on their feet, so they’re not going to stand to be mounted for heat detection. Also, they’re not going to mount other cows that come into heat. So what it does, a herd that is lame has lower heat detection efficiency thus we’re not putting semen in cows. And we’re not generating pregnancies.

I understand there’s a video out now where you can view the lameness scoring system?

Yes. Zimpro Company that we’ve teamed up with. Zimpro actually has a video that is put out that the farmers can get to view the lameness scoring system. And this time of year is critical because we’re coming into summer time and this time of year is where cows need their hooves trimmed more often than any other time of the year. Because in the summer time, they’re more susceptible to becoming lame than in the wintertime. So hoof trimming and the evaluation of the herd right now on a one to five system is probably more critical than any other time.

Detecting lameness can be a little challenging because it doesn’t occur overnight, does it?
It’s very subtle. It creeps up on you, and you don’t really see it. You don’t identify a lot of cows being in a herd that have to be trimmed or wrapped, but it slowly builds up to where we see less cows in heat, and we get less pregnancies; then when we come in and do analysis we see that the herd has a lameness problem building with it. So it’s kind of behind-the-scenes affect in reproduction that, like I said, this time of year is pretty dramatic that we get this done or we will really show for it in the fall.

Ray Nebel, Reproductive Solutions specialist