Evaluating the association between early-lactation lying behavior and hoof lesion development in lactating Jersey cows

Abstract

Objectives were to evaluate the association between behavior and hoof lesions (HL) in lactating dairy cows. Jersey cows without any visible HL on all 4 legs were enrolled at 20 ± 3 d in milk (DIM), examined for body condition score (BCS), and had an automatic activity monitor (AfiTag II, AfiMilk, Afikim, Israel) attached to their right hind leg. At 120 ± 3 DIM, activity monitors were removed and cows were re-examined for HL and BCS. Cows were classified according to HL status as either healthy or with HL at d 120. Because sole hemorrhage (SH) accounted for over 80% of HL on d 120, SH was reclassified according to the number of feet affected. Daily activity data (daily lying duration, lying bouts, lying bout duration, and number of steps) of 344 cows collected between d 20 and d 120 were analyzed using restricted maximum likelihood linear mixed models with an autoregressive covariance structure. Separate models were built to include specific activities, HL status at d 120, DIM, interaction between lesion status at d 120 and DIM, parity, season of calving, and BCS change from d 20 to d 120 as fixed effects. Cow was included in all models as random effect. Incidence of HL at d 120 was 58.4% (n = 201 out of 344). Compared with healthy cows, cows with HL at d 120 had reduced daily lying duration (−0.53 h; 95% CI: −0.78 to −0.28 h) in the early postpartum period. We found no evidence for a difference in number of lying bouts (0.41; 95% CI: −0.76 to 1.59;), lying bout duration (−3.04 min; 95% CI: −6.6 to 0.49), and number of steps (62.14; 95% CI: −89.62 to 213.91) between cows that remained healthy and those that developed HL. Compared with healthy cows, cows that developed SH in 1 or more feet had reduced daily lying duration in the early postpartum period. Irrespective of lesion status at d 120, daily lying duration and lying bout duration increased from d 20 to d 120, whereas lying bout number and number of steps decreased from d 20 to d 120. We concluded that cows that developed HL had a reduced daily lying duration in the early postpartum period. Therefore, reduced daily lying duration should be considered a risk factor for HL development in lactating dairy cows.

Standing behavior and sole horn lesions: A prospective observational longitudinal study

“…Removal of the influential data point in graph C increased the effect size for change in average daily standing time, which changed the P-value from 0.09 to 0.03. spent on average 13.9 and 15.6 h/d standing during the last 2 wk before and 24 h after calving, respectively. Omontese et al (2020) graphically presented predicted daily lying time between 18 and 116 DIM, contrasting cows with no lesions and cows with hoof lesions at 120 DIM (88% of hoof lesions were sole hemorrhages). At 18 DIM, the predicted daily lying time for cows that later developed hoof lesions was approximately 10 h/d (corresponding to a standing time of 14 h/d), while predicted lying time for cows that did not develop hoof lesions was approximately 10.5 h/d (standing 13.5 h/d).…”

Rumination and Activity Patterns in Angus and Angus-Cross Beef Calves: Influences of Sex, Breed, and Backgrounding Diet

“…Differences in rumination activity have been reported between breeds [ 17 ] as well as body sizes [ 18 ], demonstrating that cattle with high feed intake have shorter times for ruminating and chewing [ 13 ]. Previous work on lying behavior, activity, and rumination in cattle has focused mostly on mature cattle [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ].…”