Lameness affects around 30% of UK dairy cows and is one of the most significant welfare problems in the industry, causing chronic pain, reduced welfare, and substantial economic losses to farmers.
Dairy cow lameness represents chronic pain welfare harm at enormous scale - if 30% of a 1.8 million cow UK dairy herd is lame, over 500,000 cows are experiencing ongoing pain at any time. Lameness causes pain on walking, reduces time at the feed face, and compromises social competition in group-housed systems. Many lame cows go undetected for weeks as farmers face time pressure and cows instinctively conceal pain behaviour. Flooring design, track maintenance, and overstocking are modifiable risk factors. Automated lameness detection systems are the most promising scalable welfare improvement, identifying subtle gait changes before visible lameness becomes severe.