Locomotion Scoring of Dairy Cattle
Script of Select Sires' Reproductive Moment Program
on DairyLine Radio Which Aired June 29, 2006
With Ray Nebel,
Senior Reproduction and Herd Management Specialist, Select Sires Inc.

Ray, this week we’re talking about locomotion scoring of dairy cattle. What is the importance of locomotion?

You are really assessing cattle lameness. The scoring is based upon the observation of cows standing or walking with special emphasis on back posture. Locomotion scoring helps identify lame cows as well as cows that are developing claw lesions.

What is the scoring scale for this?

The scale is actually one through five, where one is normal, two is mildly lame, three is moderately lame, four is lame and five is severely lame.

How does one become a cow-motion detector?

Actually you go through a series of queries when you look at cows. The cows should be on a flat surface free of obstacles, and they should be walking at a normal pace – we don’t want them to be running down the lane – the cow should be scored on a surface that provides adequate traction. What we would do is look at a cow and have a “yes/no” that tells us where to go from there.

How do you start then?

We look at a cow and we think the cow is favoring a limb, and if we say yes, is it a limb bearing weight, and if we say yes, the locomotion score is four; if the limb is not bearing weight, the locomotion score is five. Now, we go back to the first question, if the cow is favoring a limb and we say no, then we ask is her back arched when she’s standing. If we say yes, then the locomotion score is three; if we say no, then the next question will be is the back arched while she is walking? If we say yes, then the locomotion score is two, and if we say no, the locomotion score is one.

What do we do with these scores after they are tabulated?

The locomotion score results—we are looking at the percentage of cows in the herd that are four through five. These are the ones that are either lame or severely lame. We know that lame cows have less dry matter intake, which means they are going to lose weight and they are not gong to produce adequate amounts of milk and they are going to be sub-fertile as far as reproduction. We are looking at how many—we have less than five percent of the cows scoring four or five, which is a good number; do we have five to ten which is average but there is room for improvement?; or are there greater than ten percent of the cows that scored four and five? This would need immediate attention to be put into the area to reduce lameness.

How often should this be done, Ray?

Probably every quarter, so four times a year – every three months. What we are really looking at are cows that are fresh the first 30 days; they are probably the most important because that is when they are making the transition from the dry period into lactating herd. And then again if we go through the different pens where we normally have fresh cows, we might have a breeding pen, then we have the far-off pen. So do somewhere around 20 to 25 cows in a pen to give us a good representation and about four times a year.

Thank you, Ray. That’s Ray Nebel, senior reproductive solutions specialist at Select Sires