SORJAT - Early diagnostics and prevention of foot lesions in dairy cattle. 2009-2012
This is cooperative project with the Department of Agricultural Sciences with Veterinary experts from the Veterinary Faculty funded by the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture. The project employs 2 full time PhD students.
Abstract
Lameness is a painful and costly disease. It is estimated to be one of the major animal welfare issues in dairy production. Lameness decreases milk production, increases involuntary culling and affects reproductive performance. Due to these costs it is the third important healt trait after mastitis and fertility disorders. In free-stall housing systems cows have much higher foot lesion frequency compared with tie-stall barns. The major group of foot lesions are infectious lesions.
Early detection of lesions become more and more important to manage the problem. The number of free-stall housing systems is increasing in Finland and hence the frequency of foot lension is likely to increase. Lameness or claw disorders have found to have genetic variation, which enables the selection for better claw and foot health. Many conformation traits have also been found to be genetically correlated to lameness and claw disorders, hence they can be used as information to increase the accurracy of genetic evaluation of lameness or utilized through correlated response. Due to its high cost and welfare problems lameness has to be included in the breeding goal in dairy cattle.
The aim of this project is to develop automatic lameness detection in a milking robot and develop a model to predict the lameness from the early observations with automatic device. Another aim is to estimate the genetic parameters of claw disorders and the genetic correlations of claw disorders with conformation traits, calculate the economic value of lameness or foot lesions and construct an overall index to be used in selection for better claw and foot health.
The results of the research project improve the welfare of dairy cowsand the economical efficiency of milk production through earlier observation of claw problems and through better claw and foot health.