Top tips for managing Lameness

Lameness is a challenge, but digital dermatitis is very easily controlled and prevented. With 30% of cows affected at any one time and probably almost 100% over a lifetime, there is lots of opportunity to improve and gain better foot health.

Foot hygiene

To prevent digital dermatitis from occurring in the first place, the focus should be on foot hygiene. Once an animal is infected with DD, it will carry the disease for the rest of its life. One way to manage this is through proper footbath use and identifying active lesions for timely treatment. The goal is not to focus solely on treatment but to prevent new infections by disinfecting feet, ideally every day if not every milking.

Cows with active lesions can be identified and promptly treated to reduce the pain and send the lesion to a healing state that does not infect other healthy feet. Footbathing also appears to help keep infected cows free from infection, if done properly and with the right concentration of product.

Footbath management

While formalin and copper sulphate are popular for footbathing, copper is not licensed due to its environmental toxicity and there are safety restrictions in place on formalin due to its carcinogenic properties.

Eventually, the dairy industry won’t be able to use either.

Using the footbath will require some tinkering and adjustment at various times throughout the whole year. It’s almost like treating the footbath as if it’s a dial – at certain times you will need to increase or decrease the footbath solution concentration and frequency of use to match the level of digital dermatitis in the herd. Therefore, monitoring and management of digital dermatitis on a continual (weekly) basis will make it cost effective.

Hoofsure Endurance

Dr Nick Bell states that Hoofsure Endurance is “the only product I’ve ever trialled that has performed as well as formalin at preventing new lesions, and I’ve trialled a lot of products”.

Hoofsure Endurance is well placed to help dairy, beef and sheep farms get on top of and control lameness. It is a proprietary footbath solution with over 40 trials across three continents. Notable research on cattle shows it is up to 44% more effective than formalin and copper sulphate with proven antibacterial activity.

For sheep, an independent clinical study on the effectiveness of footbath solutions found that 65% of sheep improved after one pass through a footbath containing Hoofsure Endurance at 2% dilution rate.

With innovation at the heart of Provita, its dedicated research and development team have now developed a new improved formula. Utilising proprietary technology, the new formula is 33% faster acting and provides more contact time on the hoof.

Key benefits:

• Safer to use and biodegradable
• Highly concentrated, allowing up to 500 cow passes per 200-litre footbath and up to 400 sheep passes per 100-litre footbath
• Range also includes Konquest Hoof gel and Combat Hoof spray.
• Improved foot condition

Provita recently visited a local farmer in Rathduff, Co Cork who has used Provita Hoofsure Endurance for nine years in order to control lameness on his farm. DD was never much of an issue on the farm but unfortunately when cattle were bought in, the problem began to increase. Furthermore, other types of footbath solutions the farm tried did not help.

The farmer explained: “I use Hoofsure Endurance regularly throughout the year and increase frequency in the winter when the weather is not good with cattle inside and the ground is mucky. I find that footbathing often at low dilution rate of 2% keeps the cows’ feet in better condition. If I have an odd flare up of DD, I will spot spray individual cases with Provita Combat to help treat the problem and of course continue to footbath them.”

For special offers of Hoofsure Endurance range please contact Provita directly. References available on request.

Read more livestock news