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How is your mating going? I was doing an AI run again this year so I thought it be a good idea to talk a bit about lameness that is more specific to this time of the year – that is lameness in front feet and lameness in the bulls.
It is normal to get more lameness in front feet at this time of the year compared to other times. Cows are bulling and when they come off the ridden cow they land on their front feet. This produces more traumas to deal with than normal walking. There is not really any suspension in the front feet just like there is no suspension in human feet. People can create suspension by bending their knees but a cow can’t do that with their front feet, which puts an enormous amount of pressure on the locomotion apparatus when they do land on their front feet.

Did you know that you will break your legs if you jump of the back of a truck and you keep your legs straight? The amount of pressure that the average person puts on their feet by jumping off the back of a truck is about 1000 Kg. So it is no wonder that you do major damage if you keep your feet straight. In the same way there is a lot of force going on to the front feet of a cow when they ride another cow. A lot of the lameness in the front feet is ligament damage but we do get more hoof problems as well. This does not mean that this sort of lameness is purely caused by physical force. Again, the cow must have weakened claws from laminitis and then physical force will make the problem worse resulting in lameness. If it was purely caused by physical force we would see a lot more problems because most cows do come on heat but in comparison there are not many going lame on their front feet. We can’t stop cows from riding each other. We actually don’t want to stop it so we have to look at the stress levels on the cows and make sure that our tracks and holding yards are stone free.

Lameness in bulls is slightly different. A few things are happening with bulls when they arrive on the farm and when they go with the cows. For one the environment is totally different – different food, different routines and different life style. I don’t think the testosterone levels will have an effect on laminitis but all the other changes currently do. We do have some physical problems as well. The wear pattern in animals that only walk on pasture is different from animals that walk on hard surfaces. When bulls all of a sudden walk on hard surfaces their hooves wear faster, and it will take about 6 weeks for the bull to adjust the growth rate to the wearing rate so a lot of bulls end up with thin soles. I think that the key is to have enough bulls to be able to rotate them and make sure that you use them in short bursts.
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