Neil Chesterton is a New Zealand vet who specialises in the area of lameness, particularly lameness prevention. Neil is travelling Ireland and the United Kingdom at the moment, speaking at events and seminars. The Irish Farmers Journal met up with him in Kilkenny recently.

Neil’s opinion on the main causes of lameness echoes those of Irish vet Riona Sayers from Moorepark. They say the main cause is injury to the hoof, which leads to things such as white line disease, bruises and ulcers. Six months ago, another well-known vet and lameness expert, Roger Blowey, who is based in the UK, said that the main cause of lameness was mortellaro, or digital dermatitis as he called it.

So who is right? The answer is both, as the cause depends largely on what type of dairy farming you do. Mortellaro can be a big problem in herds that are housed for most or all of the year, as is the case in the UK and Northern Ireland.

But in Ireland and New Zealand, where cows predominately walk to and from paddocks for milking and grazing, it’s injury to the hoof that is the big risk factor.

Neil says that in grass-based systems, the single biggest thing that farmers can do to reduce lameness is to reduce pressure on the hoof. Interestingly, most of his recommendations were to do with people’s behaviour and understanding cow behaviour.

“There are two main causes of pressure and that is poorly designed yards and cow tracks that are not being maintained leading to poor cow flow and then there are impatient people. The two of them combined is a recipe for lameness.”

The top tips

Understanding cow behaviour

  • Cows are animals of prey so they are always looking out for signs of danger and to see if people are friendly or not. If cows are aroused there will be more pressure on their feet.
  • Cows have panoramic vision to the sides, but have a blind spot directly in front and directly behind. They need to turn their head to see. People should walk 10m back from the herd when they are being moved to reduce pressure and allow cows time to turn their heads slightly to see where the drover is.
  • Cow’s back legs follow their front legs. If a cow can see where her front legs are going she will avoid obstacles and the back legs will follow in the same path. To do this, she must be able to keep her head down. Cows under pressure will have raised heads.

    • Cows and people

  • Cows recognise people and have permanent memory so if you treat cows badly they will remember it. Neil says a number of things people do can frighten cows and upset their rhythm. These include making too much noise, hitting stallwork in the parlour with plastic pipes, fast movement, coming out the back of the pit unexpectedly and standing at the back of the pit facing cows. When asked about radios in parlours, he said if a radio makes the milker a happier person then it’s a good idea but make sure everyone doing the milking likes that music.
  • Every cow has a flight zone, which is her personal space and this varies from cow to cow. Entering the cow’s flight zone will cause the cow to move quickly, putting pressure on her feet.
  • Cows are happy to walk in the opposite direction of the person handling them. When filling a crush or loading a row in the milking parlour, it is quicker and less stressful for everyone to walk in the opposite direction of where you want the cows to go. This is because cows will move forward when you pass their balance point, which is around their shoulders. So when trying to fill the first few cows in a row, rather than shouting from behind, start walking from the front of the pit and move down slowly.

    • Cows in a herd

  • A hierarchy exists within herds. When walking on a roadway, about half of the dominant cows will be at the front, with one-quarter in the middle and the rest at the back. Dominant cows bully and puck less-dominant cows. They determine the speed at which the herd moves because when they stop other cows will stop too as they will be afraid to pass them. Trying to speed up cows on the roadway will increase pressure and stress as they can only go as fast as the dominant cows. Heads up in the air is the last sign of pressure. Cows that are walking very close together or touching sideways off each other are under pressure. Cows that are reversing are afraid of the head of a dominant cow.
  • There is a difference between walking order and milking order. Cows first into the collecting yard don’t necessarily get milked first. The collecting yard must be big enough to allow cows to re-order among themselves without interference.

    • “Farmers always get hung up about making sure every row is full so they go out into the yard to get in the last three or four cows to fill the row. But more often than not the cows that are standing closest to the parlour just don’t want to go in this time so they back away or avoid going in. Milking time would actually be faster if they didn’t fill every row fully and just milked what they had. It would also put less pressure on cows,” Neil says.

  • Crossbred cows need 1.4m square per cow while Holstein Friesians need 1.8m² per cow in the collecting yard.
  • Cows are creatures of habit and like a routine. Neil says it is up to the farmer to decide the routine but everyone working on the farm should implement it. Things such as using the same words to move stock all make a difference. Saying words such as “come-on, come-on” when feeding or moving calves and heifers will train them for when they join the herd.

    • Infrastructure

    Understanding and implementing the points made above will reduce the risks of lameness, even where facilities are less than ideal. But the reverse is also true the best laid out yard and the smoothest roadways will not prevent lameness if those working on the farm don’t understand cow behaviour.

    When it comes to roadways, Neil recommends that all roadways should be a minimum of five metres wide, from post to post.

    This is because tractors and other vehicles are three metres wide so having a five-metre roadway means they don’t have to travel in the same path every time, thereby extending the life of the road surface.

    Neil recommends a camber of between 3% and 5% going in both directions. This means that on a five-metre wide road, the centre of the road should be between 7.5cm and 12.5cm higher than the edge. He recommends spraying the edge with glyphosate and removing a sod at every post to allow water to escape. He says removing the clay build-up at the sides is an option, but he said that very often the roots hold the edge of the road together so he prefers to spray the grass but leave it in place.

    The edge of the road needs to be higher than the field to get water away. He is a big fan of lime fines on the surface as these are smooth and firm and bind together well, allowing for water to run off.

    He recommends the concrete area in front of the parlour to be extended beyond turns, so that tractors and vehicles turning won’t cut up the surface and bring up sharp stones.

    Neil says on a long farm, if lameness is an issue, its best to alternate a long walk with a short walk the following day. Avoid sharp turns on concrete as this causes white line disease.

    On footbathing, he says the footbath should be flush with the concrete base and involve a step up into, not down. The bath should be big enough to take 100 litres of solution per 100 cows. Generally, he says you can get two runs out of the solution, morning and evening.

    Neil says that Irish farmers don’t spend enough money on road and track maintenance. He recommends a sum of money to be put aside every year to resurface sections of farm roadways, with priority given to sections that are used most regularly.

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