HERD HEALTH
Moving at pace
Allowing cows to walk to the shed at their own pace and in the order they have determined, means they can walk where they know it is safe and can watch their feet.
By Ross Nolly
Simple management techniques can be implemented on-farm to minimise lameness as the new season kicks off.
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attling cow lameness is an ongoing problem every year on many farms and now the new season has started, farmers have missed the boat to make major improvements to tracks and shed design. So what can a farmer do? There are a number of simple management techniques that can be implemented to minimise lameness – and won’t cost farmers a cent. Neil Chesterton is known throughout New Zealand as the go-to guru on cow lameness and cattle-flow. He has been investigating the causes of lameness since the early 80s. His interest is the prevention of lameness in pasture-fed dairy herds. In recent years, his interest has focused on the importance of herd management on the farm tracks and in the milking shed. “Most cow lameness starts showing up during the first three months of the new season. The two main lameness risk factors are what the cows walk on and how they’re herded. It’s now too late to change what they walk on because they’re due to calve. However, it’s the key time to put prevention procedures in place,” Chesterton says. He feels that an automatic gate release that allows cows to walk at their own pace is the best method to reduce pressure on the cows walking to the cowshed. If that solution isn’t available, the best option is to keep a distance
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behind the herd when it walks to the shed. “I once said that you should keep five metres behind the cows, but I was wrong. Two years ago I conducted some experiments and discovered that anything closer than 10m pushes them too hard,” he says. “If you’re too close and push too hard, the last cows watch you and not where they place their feet. Try following two fence posts behind the cows, it’s a handy distance measure.” Three months ago while visiting a South Island farm that milked 850 cows, he observed a staff member bringing them to the shed was only five metres behind the
herd. This caused the back group of 80150 cows to bunch up. “I asked him to drop back to 10m. He replied that he’d already tried it and it caused the herd to stop. He dropped back and that group did stop because they’d been too tight. The others kept going at the same pace and finally the whole herd was moving,” he says. Using an automatic release gate at the paddock or observing the following distance for the three months from August to October, both the cows and people become trained. Chesterton feels that farmers
Veterinarian Neil Chesterton has been investigating the causes of lameness in cows since the early 80s and is New Zealand’s go-to guru on the subject.
DAIRY FARMER
August 2021
