Sheep lameness — primarily from footrot, foot scald, and white line disease — affects welfare on a massive scale, with prevention-based herd management approaches offering better welfare and economic outcomes than reactive treatment.
Sheep lameness represents one of the most widespread welfare problems in livestock farming globally, partly because its prevalence has been normalized — high lameness rates have been accepted as inevitable rather than recognized as preventable welfare failures. Pain from footrot is acute and severe; the tissue destruction caused by virulent Dichelobacter nodosus infection is painful by any reasonable assessment. The economics of sheep farming create barriers to timely treatment — the cost of individual treatment relative to individual animal value discourages prompt intervention. Welfare improvement requires changing this economic calculation by demonstrating the herd-level productivity costs of high lameness prevalence and providing accessible, low-cost treatment protocols. Farm assurance programs that include lameness scoring as a performance metric create accountability for lameness management.