Saturday, March 30, 2024

Do the locomotion

Avatar photo
Having been immersed in rugby for a long while, it’s occurred to me that cows are like rugby players, in the same way horses are like soccer players. 
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Horses are like soccer players because they are all about their hair and their appearance. They might be smart and clean shaven, or have pretty bows in their hair, or they might be dressed up to go out. They are lean and fit and undoubtedly athletic, but they are also overvalued and overpriced. 

Horses most resemble soccer players in the way they respond to physical knocks. If something completely disastrous happens, such as the wind changes direction or someone passes close by them, your average horse or midfield soccer player will fall over. When they do that, of course they will be in agony and writhe around on the ground for maximum attention. 

For the horse, once you’ve downed your chardonnay, this means getting an expensive horse vet out as soon as possible for some magic potion. For the soccer player it means rolling around in some sort of voodoo breakdance for a few minutes before getting some expensive magic spray and walking away unaffected. 

It’s worse if the horse or footballer faces a significant, world-ending catastrophe. For example, if the grass is slightly too long, or the ‘going’ (this is horse-speak for a paddock) is rough, they might stumble and break a leg. For the horse, this means either instant death by shooting or instant bankruptcy by veterinary intervention. For the footballer it means instant pension of a few million Euros or instant television celebrity stardom, or both. 

Cows, on the other hand, are so much like rugby players it’s uncanny. First, they’re not immediately attractive in the way other species or athletes are. But they do have a rough and unusual charm. They’re fairly straightforward, uncomplicated beasts, largely respectful and mostly do what it says on the box without drama. They’re reliable. 

Similarities continue around injuries. As we’ve mentioned, a small bruise on a horse or footballer’s leg is life-threatening. A minor thing like a broken foot bone or fractured fibula in your average cow or rugby player means they might not quite play all the World Cup games but they turn up for more than, say, the English squad. 

Cows, like rugby players, are stoic. This is great if you want to keep them and milk them and look after them. They rarely get hurt and if they do you know it’s serious. You can call the vet out legitimately. But this is not so good when it comes to identifying problems. 

With the repro season well under way on dairy farms, most farmers will be finishing AI, looking to bulls, checking non-return rates and generally easing towards an austere Christmas. Typically at this time of year we see a significant drop off in animal health issues but a rise in lameness. Often the lame cows we see are quite lame and need either a lot of treatment or a long period of recovery or both. 

The reason is not that farmers are slack – it’s because cows are rugby players. They hide injuries well and they’re stoic and uncomplaining. They have – we think –a higher threshold for (some) pain and less sophisticated ways of showing it. 

But we also know lameness affects reproductive performance. This is obvious in bulls, and it’s critical to make sure bulls are rotated and rested, and any signs of lameness are investigated and treated as early as possible. In fact, bull health is critical to sperm health so bulls should always be checked early and treated appropriately if any disease is suspected. 

But it’s also true for cows. Lame cows are less likely to display heat, are less likely to conceive if they do show heat, and more likely to be slower to get in-calf. This might seem obvious but what’s often not recognised is even mild lameness has an effect on reproduction. The proportion of mildly lame cows in a herd can be quite large, and quite hard to identify. 

Locomotion scoring is a technique for measuring the subtle lameness showed by some cows. It involves watching all cows and scoring them on their gait over a flat, safe surface. At this time of year, it’s not uncommon to have 10% of cows showing some mild signs of lameness – the sort that isn’t normally picked up by staff. In some herds, up to 20% of cows could be slightly lame. 

Early identification leads to early correction. Often, mildly lame cows respond to being put in a nearby paddock and milked once a day. Early treatment of mild cases will always be better than late treatment of severe cases. Locomotion scoring at this time of year almost always pays dividends. Your vet might be happy to combine it with BCS scoring the herd. 

Cows might be rugby players but they are still high-performance athletes. In fact, a decent milking cow uses the same energy each day as an All Black uses for three matches over three weeks. Doing locomotion scoring and keeping a close eye on lameness will help your cows get and stay in-calf.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading