Bovine digital dermatitis (BDD) is a severe infectious cause of lameness which has spread through dairy cattle populations worldwide, causing serious welfare and agricultural problems. Spirochetes are the main organisms implicated and have previously proven difficult to isolate. This study aimed to isolate and characterise the range of spirochetes associated with BDD in the UK. Twenty-three spi...

Bovine digital dermatitis is an emerging infectious disease that causes lameness, decreased milk production, and weight loss in livestock. Proliferative stages of bovine digital dermatitis demonstrate keratin filament formation in skin above the hooves in affected animals. The multifactorial etiology of digital dermatitis is not well understood, but spirochetes and other coinfecting microorgani...

Digital dermatitis is a highly prevalent painful lesion affecting the feet in dairy cattle. Even though the pathogenesis has been subject of investigation since 1974, there is still a lack of knowledge about the spread of the disease among cows within a herd as well as between herds. The purpose of this study was to monitor transmission of digital dermatitis under experimental conditions betwee...

Copper sulfate is the industry gold standard footbath ingredient for controlling dairy cow digital dermatitis. However, when used footbath solutions are deposited on soil, high levels of copper in the soil may result, which can have toxic and negative effects on plant growth. An alternative to copper sulfate is Provita Hoofsure Endurance (Provita Eurotech Ltd., Omagh, UK), which is a biodegrada...

An intervention trial by Hedges and others (2001) studying 1109 cow-years, in which every lame cow was examined and recorded by a veterinary surgeon, determined the four main causes of lameness to be sole ulcers, white line disease, digital dermatitis and interdigital necrobacillosis (‘foul’ or ‘foot rot’) (see graph on the right). Sole ulcers and white line disease are defects of the hoof and,...

Digital dermatitis is a polybacterial disease process of dairy and beef cattle. Lesions are most commonly identified on the plantar aspect of the interdigital cleft of the hind limbs. Treponema spp are routinely present in large numbers of active lesions. Lesions are painful to the touch and can result in clinical lameness. The infectious nature generally results in endemic infection of cattle ...

Careful antemortem examination and interpretation of findings, assisted by good clinical records, do much to throw light on the nature of vertical fissure in cattle. During an eight month period of investigation, 13 (3.2%) lame cows with vertical fissure out of 52 Holstein cows with different claw fissures were selected for clinical and gross pathological purposes in a commercial dairy farm wit...

The main aim of the paper is to raise some issues related to the access and usage of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in South-Eastern Europe. It is based on the results of a recent project and highlights the trends and the remaining challenges for ICT development in the region. A short review is made on the changes in the concept of Digital Divide with the time, and in particul...