Lameness is one of the most prevalent and welfare-significant conditions in dairy cattle, causing chronic pain that impairs mobility, feeding, and reproductive performance, and requiring systematic farm-level management.
Lameness is a major chronic welfare problem in dairy systems — a cow that scores 3 or above on a five-point scale is in significant pain that impairs virtually every aspect of her daily life, from walking to the feed face to lying down to rest. The scale of the problem is enormous: in a herd of 200 cows, 40-60 may be lame at any given time without proactive management. The solutions are known — regular mobility scoring, prompt treatment, appropriate housing design, and preventive hoof care — but require consistent farmer commitment and adequate labour. Farms with lameness prevalence above 10% should be required to develop and implement action plans.