Impact of different management methods on prevalence of lameness in 25 Holstein-Friesian herds in Hungary

Introduction
In the time of cutting costs policies in dairy industry farmers have temptation to saving money by modifying cow management and paying less attention to cows’ locomotion (Shearer and van Amstel, 2001 and Haskell et al., 2006). Investments in dairy facilities in Hungary between 2010 and 2012 gave opportunity to observe how improvements in facilities and management methods influenced prevalence of lameness. 

Materials and Methods
10 067 cows on 25 Holstein Friesian herds were visited twice, between May to November 2010 and 2011. During each visit, all milking cows leaving milking parlour were locomotion scored and detailed records of changes were written down. The observations in two years affected in creating a rank of farms with their successes in dealing with lameness. Detailed investigations of trimming methods helped to rank farms according to their effectiveness in decreasing the number of lame cows in different circumstances. 

Results
Among the 25 farms taking part in a project, five were able to significantly decrease the number of lame cows between 4.0 and 13.6%. Another sixteen farms were found with significant to highly-significant greater proportion of cows with locomotion disorders ranging from 3.7% to up to 29.7%. Four farms did not show any significant changes in lameness distributions between two years (Table 1 and 2). 

Conclusions
The most common effective changes were employing professional hoof trimmers, checking cows between trimmings and provisions of effective foot baths. On the other hand, there was proof that old routine programs for preventing lameness need to be altered and implemented according to changing conditions on the farms. Professional trimming was found to be more effective than on-farm trimming on farms with engineering projects, with feeding disorders and when trimming was changed from on-farm to professional and vice versa. There should be monitoring of lameness and comparison of hoof trimming teams.