Economic importance of digital diseases in cattle

Abstract

Lameness in dairy cows is undoubtedly an important cause of economic loss to the milk industry, ranking third or fourth after mastitis, infertility, and possibly metabolic diseases. Information on losses in young cattle and beef stock due to lameness is very scanty, and this paper is only concerned with adult dairy cattle, and primarily the cow rather than the bull. Of course lameness due to infectious systemic diseases, a prime example being Foot and Mouth disease, causes severe weight loss due to discomfort, pain and the development of secondary infection where, in countries without a slaughter policy, affected cattle are permitted to survive and probably to make a partial recovery. But I must exclude infectious systemic diseases and consider only primary digital diseases.

The importance of economic loss due to digital diseases is difficult to quantify with any precision. One requires to know a) the proportion of the population at risk which is affected; b) the different ways in which economic loss may arise; c) the average financial'loss due to each of the factors (b above) in an individual dairy cow which is lame.