With an increasing focus on animal welfare, lameness is actually a very important metric of animal welfare.

While it is difficult to expect every farm to have no lameness, aiming to have less than 5% at any one time should be the target for most.

Lame cows or sheep can be difficult to deal with this time of year. With stock out, it can mean bringing them in to handle and lift lame legs.

While it is very important to go after the individual lame animal, recognising if it is a problem at herd level is also important.

1. Observe

Look at the herd or flock and see what percentage of animals are lame. this can be done by walking through stock or when moving them between paddocks. It can be worthwhile getting outside eyes to do this for second opinions. It is also a job that can be paired up with body condition scoring.

2. Separate

With sheep, it often means penning them up and pulling out the lame ones into a small separate lame flock. These animals need to be tipped over in order to record the causes of lameness – this really will influence treatment and control plans.

With cows, especially those walking on roadways, it is important to lift the feet to see what is causing the lameness. The lesions will leave clues, if it is mechanical, like white line disease or bruising look at roadways and cow flow. If it is infectious like fouls or mortellaro look at foot hygiene.

By separating lame animals and giving them them TLC and recovery time will also remove any infections that might spread.

3. Treatments

Match the correct treatment to the correct condition for the best results.

With sheep, if infectious lameness is present, like footrot and CODD, it is importnat to get treatment right. Recurrences may be due to incorrect treatment or chronic carriers that need culling.

Anti-inflammatories play a huge role in lameness treatment. With mechanical lameness, like white line disease or bruising, it is important to rest damaged tissue and remove dead tissue. Shoes can make a big difference to treatment outcomes in severely affected feet. Early intervention with treatment makes all the difference

4. Control

With an infectious herd or flock problem, stopping the spread is vital. This can be done through a combination of treatment and maybe even culling chronic carriers. Footbathing and working on foot hygiene can also make a big difference.

This will require intervention at flock and herd level for and continuous monitoing of treatment outcomes and preventative strategies.

With mechanical lameness, particularly in dairy cows, go and observe cow flow over 24 hours and walk the roadways to see where the bottlenecks or problems are.

5. Prevention

Once a lameness problem is under control, the focus should be on a long-term strategy, such as having a quarantine or biosecurity plan to stop buying in problems.

If infectious lameness is an issue in sheep we can consider vaccination and review under foot conditions at housing. At winter time it should always be the aim to maximise lying time and keep the feet as clean and dry as possible.

With mechanical lameness in cows it is about focusing on roadways and cow flow around the yard and parlour.

Regular footbathing can prove valuable for stopping the spread of infection and maintaining healthy strong feet.