Rubber flooring in dairy cowsheds provides significant welfare benefits including reduced lameness, better lying behaviour, and reduced leg injury rates.
Cattle spending their lives on hard concrete develop painful conditions from impact, abrasion, and postural stress. Rubber flooring transforms the daily welfare of housed cattle by reducing pain, allowing confident movement, and improving lying time. The welfare benefit is continuous and cumulative across a cow's productive life. The business case from reduced lameness costs makes rubber flooring an economically rational as well as welfare-positive investment.