Lameness affects around 25% of dairy cows in the UK, causing significant suffering. Understanding the management and environment factors driving lameness guides effective prevention strategies.
Dairy cow lameness is a welfare emergency that affects a quarter of the national herd and causes prolonged pain. Sole ulcers develop slowly during the metabolically challenging transition period around calving, meaning that cows with visible lameness have typically been experiencing subclinical pain for weeks. The chronic nature of lameness - cows may be lame for weeks or months before receiving treatment - represents a massive welfare burden across the dairy industry. Lameness causes reduced feeding time, impaired access to water, reduced reproductive performance and early culling. The preventable nature of much lameness through appropriate flooring, cow comfort management, prompt detection and treatment makes its continued high prevalence a failure of welfare standards and management systems rather than an inevitable production consequence.