Associations of freestall design and cleanliness with cow lying behavior, hygiene, lameness, and risk of high somatic cell count

Robles, Ivelisse; Zambelis, A.; Kelton, D.F.; Barkema, Herman W.; Keefe, Greg; Roy, Jean‐Philippe; Keyserlingk, M.A.G. von; DeVries, T.J.

doi:10.3168/jds.2020-18916

Cited by 15 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…The lack of data on damage leads to a lack of understanding of how great the impact is. The quantification of the damage is essential to estimating the economic damages of a flood on a herd; thus, in this study, specific literature on animal health, such as Schreiner and Ruegg (2003) [38] and Robles et al (2021) [39], were used as instruments to understand to what extent damage occurs when the environmental conditions of a farm change. Nevertheless, it is difficult from such literature to determine an economic impact since the studies refer to different temporal spans, use different units of measure and refer to specific case studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Theoretical Framework to Assess the Impact of Flooding on Dairy Cattle Farms: Identification of Direct Damage from an Animal Welfare Perspective

Gaviglio

Corradini

Marescotti

et al. 2021

Animals

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For the economic sectors, the need to address the challenges posed by natural disasters due to climate change is an outstanding issue. To date, according to the European Commission (2019), there is still a gap in the estimation of the costs of flood in all European countries and the direct impact that these floods have on agricultural activities. More specifically, the damage to livestock has been minimally studied. The aim of this study is is therefore to identify the flood damage that affects dairy cattle farms, focusing on the damage to herds caused by a flood event; in fact, poor welfare conditions of dairy cattle directly affect production and thus farm revenue. To accomplish the aim of this study, a framework was first developed to identify possible damage types. Then, scientific literature focusing on the identification of flood damage to dairy herds was reviewed, and to quantify this damage to herds, literature sources providing information on the magnitude of variation in the identified damage types were used. Thus, our results provide relevant information on the variables that should be taken into account when assessing of the direct damage affecting the overall welfare of a dairy herd after a flood event. This evidence could then contribute to the development of tools aimed at assessing damage to dairy cattle on flood-affected farms.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Theoretical Framework to Assess the Impact of Flooding on Dairy Cattle Farms: Identification of Direct Damage from an Animal Welfare Perspective

Gaviglio

Corradini

Marescotti

et al. 2021

Animals

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“…Some design and management parameters may also have other effects than intended or even negative effects on other traits [48]. One example may be that larger stalls are positive for the lying time of the animals [49] but are also associated with more dirt in the stalls [22,50]. Consequences of design errors may be related to health, production, behavior, or hygiene.…”

Section: The Free Stallmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consequences of design errors may be related to health, production, behavior, or hygiene. Dirty stalls and cows are associated with an increased incidence of infections of the udder, higher prevalence of lameness, and reduced milk quality [11,[50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63]. Other conditions like the number of cows per stall, barn lay-out, previous experience with free stalls (early adaptation to the system), and the interactions between animals as well as with the farmer [64] should also be taken into consideration when designing a free stall based system.…”

Section: The Free Stallmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A high bacterial count in the bedding can be a risk factor for the development of mastitis [52,55,58,109,110]. However, the major problem increasing the incidence of lameness, mastitis/SCC [50,58,59,61,62,111], and inducing a higher bacterial count in the bulk milk tank [61,63] is probably contamination of the bedding with manure.…”

Section: Bedding Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This implies that the cow should be able to stand with all four feet in the stall without touching the neck rail [22,120]. A neck rail that is too high will result in dirty free stalls [50]. A general recommendation with Holstein-Friesian cows is to place the rail >210 cm from the rear curb (2 in Figure 1) and >122 cm above the stall bed.…”

Section: Neck Railmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Design of Free Stalls for Dairy Herds: A Review

Eerdenburg

Ruud

2021

Ruminants

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Lying is an important behavior of dairy cattle. Cows should spend more than 50% of a day lying as it has a high impact on their milk yield and animal welfare. The design, size, and flooring properties of the free stalls influence the time cows spend lying, the way they lie down, and their rising movements. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of the currently available information with the aim to assist farmers and advisors to come to an optimal design of the free stalls. The design of the free stalls should enable the cows to move and lie in positions as natural as possible. Cows should rest, with all parts of the body, on a clean, dry and soft bed, be able to stretch their front legs forward, lie on their sides with unobstructed space for their neck and head, and rest with their heads against their flanks without hindrance from a partition. When they stand, they should not be hindered by neck rails, partitions, or supports. A comfortable place for cows to lie down helps cows to stay healthy, improve welfare, and increase milk yield. Hence, the probability of a longer productive life for the cows increases and the number of replacements per year decreases.

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Usefulness of the total and differential somatic cell count based udder health group concept for evaluating herd management practices and udder health in dairy herds

Schwarz,

Kleinhans,

Witzel

et al. 2023

Preventive Veterinary Medicine

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Associations of freestall design and cleanliness with cow lying behavior, hygiene, lameness, and risk of high somatic cell count

Cited by 15 publications

References 48 publications

A Theoretical Framework to Assess the Impact of Flooding on Dairy Cattle Farms: Identification of Direct Damage from an Animal Welfare Perspective

A Theoretical Framework to Assess the Impact of Flooding on Dairy Cattle Farms: Identification of Direct Damage from an Animal Welfare Perspective

Design of Free Stalls for Dairy Herds: A Review

Usefulness of the total and differential somatic cell count based udder health group concept for evaluating herd management practices and udder health in dairy herds

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