[Monitoring of dairy cow claw health status in 15 herds using the computerised documentation program Claw Manager and digital parameters].

OBJECTIVE

Monitoring of claw health over a defined period using the digital documentation and analysis program Claw Manager.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

Data from 679 cows were documented with the Claw Manager during routine functional claw trimming on 15 dairy farms that were visited two or three times. The data of these 33 visits were analysed for the following parameters: prevalence of claw lesions, of their severity scores and of lameness as well as the Cow Claw Score (CCS), the Farm Claw Score (FCS) and the Farm Zone Score (FZS). Their chronological progression was shown using boxplot graphs.

RESULTS

Mean prevalence of all lame free cows was 71.9% at visit 1 (max. 95.0%, min. 21.1%) and 72.9% at visit 2 (max. 100.0%, min. 12.6%). The mean prevalence of claw lesions in all 15 herds was 61.8% for heel horn erosion (HHE), followed by white line lesions (WLL, 37.2%), sole haemorrhages (SH, 27.5%), acute and chronic stages of digital dermatitis (DD, 19.7%) and chronic laminitic claws (10.9%). In individual herds HHE (n = 15), WLL (n = 11), SH (n = 10), acute DD (n = 4) and chronic laminitic claws (n = 3) were consistently among the three most frequently observed lesions. A statistically significant improvement was found for the severity scores of the claw lesions of all cows from visit 1 to visit 2. The CCS ranged from 0 (CCS min) to 276 (CCS max), the FCS ranged from 6 to 72. The length of the upper quartiles and the length of the upper whiskers in the boxplot graphs of the CCS values of the herds at the various visits varied widely. The CCS of the cows of ten herds improved significantly from visit 1 to visit 2. Locomotion scores and CCS were significantly correlated on 30 of 33 visits.

CONCLUSION

The parameters FCS (median of all CCS values of a herd), length of the upper quartiles, length of the upper whiskers in the boxplot graphs FZS max, the prevalence of lameness and of claw lesions, and their severity scores proved to be very informative for a detailed comparison of claw data of herds over subsequent visits.