Metabolic diseases including milk fever, ketosis, and displaced abomasum cause significant welfare harm in early lactation dairy cows and are largely preventable.
Metabolic diseases cluster in the three weeks before and after calving, a period of extreme physiological challenge for high-producing dairy cows. Milk fever causes recumbency and, without treatment, death from hypocalcaemia within 24-48 hours. Subclinical ketosis causes nausea, reduced feed intake, and immune suppression that predisposes to mastitis and endometritis. The welfare cost of these conditions, while acute in severe cases, is also chronic in subclinical presentations where cows experience weeks of reduced wellbeing without obvious clinical signs. Transition cow management programmes that address nutrition, housing, and monitoring during this period have demonstrable welfare and productivity benefits.