Reflections on the Prevention of Claw Disease in Cattle

The organizers of this symposium have asked me to ‘reflect’ on the prevention of claw diseases. Reflecting gives an old man a great deal of latitude, and that can be dangerous as it encourages rambling nostalgia. When I left practice forty years ago, high-production dairy cows gave half the quantity of milk they do today. They calved, for the first time, when they were 36 months of age compared to the 24-month (or earlier) objective of contemporary herd managers. In those far-off days, ‘prevention’ was not a word frequently used in conjunction with lameness. Prevention of claw diseases is a modern notion. Today, with the aid of a sophisticated appreciation of ‘risk factors’ the science of epidemiology is playing an increasing role in defining problems (Green and Döpfer 2004.) ...