Tools for a Prompt Cowside Diagnosis: What Can Be Implemented by the Bovine Practitioner?

On the field, bovine practitioners must often take decisions promptly, not only about individual sick animals but also more and more on a herd basis. Fortunately, they can rely on a subtle clinical experience to fix the prognosis and diagnosis before possibly treating diseased animals. They can also use different clinical scoring systems to evaluate feeding efficiency, locomotion and reproduction performances at herd level (Zaaijer & Noordhuizen, 2003). For instance, body condition, rumen fill and faeces quality scores are now become unavoidable management instruments to evaluate feeding efficiency.