Economic losses due to clinical lameness in dairy cattle

Effects of clinical digital diseases on milk production, calving interval, culling rate and incidence of other diseases were derived from data on 2183 cows and 6273 lactations, routinely collected by veterinarians on 21 dairy farms served by the School of Veterinary Medicine in Utrecht, Netherlands. Effects that could not be obtained from the dataset (i.e., fluctuations in live weight, labour requirement and treatments) were derived from literature. All physical effects were built into a Partial Budgeting model to calculate the economic losses on the farms. The results showed that the average losses from clinical digital diseases per foot-lame cow were NLG 230 per year. The incidence in these herds averaged 21%, resulting in a loss of almost NLG 50 per average cow present in the herd, This equals 4-5% of a typical income on Dutch dairy farms, and ranks third after mastitis (NLG 150 per cow) and fertility problems (NLG 125 per cow). Differences in losses among farms were found to be even greater than the average losses, indicating that there is potential for improvement. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.