Lameness is one of the most prevalent and painful conditions in dairy cattle, yet preventive strategies are well established and their implementation benefits both animal welfare and farm economics.
Dairy cow lameness is simultaneously one of the most welfare-significant and most economically costly problems in commercial dairy farming — a rare alignment of welfare and economic interests that should facilitate rapid improvement but has not done so at the pace the evidence would suggest. Lame cows suffer significant pain with every step, lie down less (increasing time standing on damaged hooves), eat less, produce less milk, conceive less readily, and have shorter productive lives. The pain of conditions like sole ulcers — where the sensitive laminar tissue beneath the hoof is exposed — has been confirmed through multiple pain assessment methods including grimace scales, analgesic trials, and gait analysis. Prevention is substantially more cost-effective than treatment: housing with appropriate flooring, good cow flow, adequate lying time, preventive trimming, and regular locomotion scoring collectively reduce lameness prevalence to under 10% in best-practice herds. The challenge is achieving consistent implementation across the industry, where lameness is often normalised as inevitable rather than recognised as preventable with known interventions.