The Negative Contribution of Specific Claw Disorders on Dairy Cow Gait

For dairy cows, claw disorders are amongst the most important health problems during their active life and cause up to 90% of the lameness cases on dairy farms (Weaver, 2000). To examine the possibility to detect these disorders by an automated system in an early stage of the disease, the associations between claw disorders and cow gait parameters were weekly examined in 24 lactating Holstein cows during a period of six weeks. Based on video material of each individual cow walking through a six meter corridor, five observers scored the gait of the cows according to the method described by Winckler and Willen (2001). Manual frame by frame analysis and identification of claw strike (claw contacting the ground at end of swing) and claw-off (claw leaving the ground at end of stance) events in position and time were performed using the video images. Based on this data, the parameters summarised in table 1 were determined ...