Corrective breeding to improve feet and legs can help reduce lameness in herds

Feet and legs are the easiest things to improve via corrective breeding than anything else in the cow apart from the udder, according to Simon Moseley and Andy Smith, from Cogent.

Mr Moseley said 50 per cent of genes were linked to the udder and 25 per cent to feet and legs, so a female with poor feet and legs could be put to a bull with good scores in that area to produce progeny without the same problems as the dam.

Foot angle had a heritability of 10 per cent, said Mr Smith, and rear leg set 20 per cent, figures that are a lot higher than many traits bred for in dairy cows.

And when it came to those bone structure issues, the only positive action was to prevent the problem being repeated in home-bred heifers coming into the herd.

“The only way to do it is to breed the next generation better,” said Mr Smith, adding that there was plenty of help out there for farmers not comfortable choosing bulls for corrective breeding themselves.

Mr Moseley focused on sickle legs and straight legs as two big issues, as both meant cows were not distributing their weight properly, making them more prone to lameness.

Low foot angle

A frequent problem with sickle legs, where the cow has a low foot angle and the hocks point inwards, is toe over-growth.

While this could be correcting with trimming, the underlying problem of tendons being stretched could not, permanently weakening the cows back feet.

Sickle legged cows were more prone to digital dermatitis, white line disease and sole ulcers, he said. Straight legged cows could be spotted because of their inability to take big strides, taking small footsteps instead with their feet splayed out.

This condition manifests itself in a very steep foot angle and no flex in the hock.

In addition to foot problems, Mr Moseley said, cows would be more susceptible to doing the splits and would be higher in the rump, making them harder to breed.

John Powrie, of NWF Agriculture, also touched on the area of fertility, saying acidosis should be avoided for many reasons, including its link to laminitis and fertility problems.

He said not to feed more than 4kg of concentrate in one go and to always have plenty of well formulated, forage-based ration in form of cows.

He suggested looking for signs, as cows shifting between feet was a sign of laminitis, persistent tail switching meant acidosis and loose manure indicated a badly formulated ration.

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