Comparison of claw diagnoses in lame dairy cows from herds with and without „Chronic Disease“.

On behalf of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the case-control study „Importance of Clostridium botulinum for chronic disease process in dairy cattle“ was launched in 2012. Farms with long-lasting herd health problems were classified as case-farms (n=92). Farms without herd health problems were classified as control-farms (n=47). One result of this case-control study was that many of the examined dairy farms had a high frequency of lame cows. The following study should examine, if there were differences between the examined animals on control-farms and case-farms concerning the frequency, distribution or type of claw diagnoses. Furthermore, associations between claw diagnoses and management, housing, feeding and the case-control-status were evaluated, respectively. The present results suggest that neither the distribution of claw diagnoses, nor the locomotion pattern in dairy cows of herds with „Chronic Disease“ differed in comparison with lame cows of control farms. Remarkably, the number of claw diagnoses per animal was lower in the examined cows of the control-farms than in the examined cows of the case-farms. This could be due to the fact that control farms performed better concerning housing, feeding and management than case-farms. Therefore, this study suggests that housing, feeding and management factors might be causal for „Chronic Disease“.