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The Influence of Barn Design on Dairy Cow Hygiene, Lameness and Udder Health

A system of hygiene scoring is described which charts the distribution of manure over three areas of the body; udder, lower legs and upper leg and flank. The practical relevance of quantifying hygiene is described in relation to the prevalence of masbreastis and lameness. Aspects of freestall and tiestall design which impact hygiene and lying times are reviewed and the link between cow comfort and lameness is explored.

A failure to understand the comfort and spatial requirements of the cow has led to the erection of many dairy barns in North America which compromise cow health and welfare. Few veterinarians have managed to develop the necessary interests and skills to be called upon for housing advice, leaving agricultural engineers to make planning decisions based on cost, ease of manure management and non-health related matters. In Europe, farm butturance programs developed by milk buyers, call upon veterinarians to buttess the adequacy of dairy herd housing, creating an opportunity for greater involvement in this area. Concerns over food animal welfare are increasing in the US and it is important that the veterinary profession plays a pivotal role in implementing balanced, reasonable and informed changes in management on farms in the future, to improve health and welfare.

Only recently, by working together, have veterinarians, dairy scientists and engineers, succeeded in measuring health outcomes derived from environmental factors, thereby improving the quality of advice given to farmers with regard to housing options for dairy cows.

If we are to decrease dairy herd turnover rates and improve cow health and longevity we must ask crucial questions, which impact the survival rate of our dairy cows:

. What kind of bedding is optimal for masbreastis prevention?

. Which type of stall design optimizes cow comfort and reduces the prevalence of lameness?

. How can we reduce the prevalence of hock injuries?

. How frequently do we have to scrape alleyways to prevent infectious hoof conditions?

These and many more such questions need to be answered. Therefore, in this paper I would like to review the state of current knowledge on the impact of housing design on hygiene, udder health and lameness.

Charting the distribution and degree of manure contamination over different areas of the cow's body is not a new idea. Various hygiene scoring systems have been developed over the years to investigate the influence of different kinds of stall base and bedding material on hygiene13, 14, 47, the influence of electric cow trainers,7 and most recently to examine the effect of tail-docking on manure contamination21.

The majority of these systems have failed to be used on farm as a practical tool for monitoring hygiene outside of the research setting. For scoring to be useful to veterinarians and farmers, we must understand the significance of manure contamination on different zones of the body and then be able to compare the degree of contamination with some established benchmark, derived either on the farm itself over time, or from other similar farms.

Lower leg zone contamination will indicate the amount of manure that the cows have to walk through in alleyways and exercise areas. The upper leg and flank zone will reflect contamination from lying in manure on the rear of stalls and in wet unhygienic dirt lots. Undocked tails that hang in wet manure filled alleys will also contribute to manure contamination in this zone. The transfer of manure from the lower legs and tail to the udder has been elegantly shown previously1, leaving the udder the most important area to score.

Each area is scored 1 = clean, little or no evidence of manure, 2 = clean, only slight manure splashing, 3 = dirty, distinct demarcated plaques of manure and 4 = filthy, confluent plaques of manure. Any given cow should receive a separate score for each zone, not a single score representative of all zones. When presenting the data, it is uninformative for the farmer to present a mean or a median score for each zone, rather we should be interested in the proportion of scores which are "too dirty". I have arbitrarily designated scores 3 and 4 for each zone as "too dirty". Cows in different environments differ in the zonal pattern of contamination:

. Typically, freestall cows will have high lower leg scores due to poor alleyway hygiene. A few individual cows may have high flank and udder scores if they are lying in alleyways, but this does not usually present as a group problem. Pens where diagonal lying is a problem, especially in heifer groups, may show higher than average flank and upper leg scores.

. In contrast, tiestall cows usually have relatively clean lower legs, as they have less exposure to deep manure in alleys, but they tend to have higher flank and upper leg scores - from lying in manure deposited on the rear of the stall.

. Cows confined to a wet muddy dirt lot will have the worst hygiene picture of all - their lower legs will be filthy from walking through deep mud and their upper legs and flanks will be covered from having to lie down in the dirt. Post-fresh cows in freestall barns will retain this contamination picture for several weeks.

As a veterinarian visiting the farm, it is difficult to tell a farmer that their cows are "too dirty" and that improved cleanliness is required. Use of a quanbreastative approach, rather than a qualitative opinion, is a more effective means of delivering the message and by scoring in zones we can give more structured advice on how to keep cows cleaner.

For hygiene scoring to be taken seriously, there must be a cost buttociated with keeping animals dirty. For dairy cows, the cost of poor hygiene is an increased risk of masbreastis and lameness.