Foot rot is one of the most common and painful conditions in sheep, causing lameness that significantly reduces welfare. The disease is preventable and treatable, making its prevalence a management failure.
Lame sheep experience chronic pain that impairs feeding, social behaviour, and reproduction. Research using pain scoring and production data confirms that foot rot causes both acute pain during tissue destruction and ongoing pain from the wound. Affected ewes wean lighter lambs and have worse body condition scores — physical evidence of the welfare and production cost. Foot rot is preventable with vaccines and management, and treatable with antibiotics when caught early. Its continued high prevalence in many UK flocks represents a preventable welfare failure driven by inadequate monitoring, delayed treatment, and insufficient vaccination coverage.