1. The aim was to determine the prevalence of femoral head necrosis (FHN) as a cause of lameness in broilers, and to increase knowledge of its morphological features and aetiology. The studies were carried out in two farms (A and B) in Bulgaria, on 650,000 chickens from 38 flocks. 2. Lameness in broilers varied from 3-4% up to 15% for both farms. In affected flocks, mortality due to lameness ra...

The objective of this study was to evaluate if a multi-sensor system (milk, activity, body posture) was a better classifier for lameness than the single-sensor-based detection models. Between September 2013 and August 2014, 3629 cow observations were collected on a commercial dairy farm in Belgium. Human locomotion scoring was used as reference for the model development and evaluation. Cow beha...

BACKGROUND Joint swelling and lameness are the most obvious and persistent clinical signs of infectious arthritis in piglets. For a positive treatment effect of piglets with arthritis, early initiated treatments with antibiotics are desired. Hitherto pain-reducing drugs have rarely been used within veterinary medicine, but the potential of non steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) are interes...

Objective measures of canine gait quality via force plates, pressure mats or kinematic analysis are considered superior to subjective gait assessment (SGA). Despite research demonstrating that SGA does not accurately detect subtle lameness, it remains the most commonly performed diagnostic test for detecting lameness in dogs. This is largely because the financial, temporal and spatial requireme...

A 4-balance system for measuring the leg-load distribution of dairy cows during milking to detect lameness was developed. Leg weights of 73 cows were successfully recorded during almost 10,000 robotic milkings over a period of 5 mo. Cows were scored weekly for locomotion, and lame cows were inspected clinically for hoof lesions. Unsuccessful measurements, caused by cows standing outside the bal...

Lameness in dairy cows includes many disease conditions, and a systematic approach is required to diagnose the predominant causes and identify the important risk factors. Lameness prevalence can be quantified using locomotion scoring systems. Entire herds can be scored quite easily as they walk access lanes. If lameness prevalence exceeds 15% of the herd, it is important to differentiate the ca...

Lameness in cattle is a major welfare problem and has important economic implications. It is known that lameness has a multifactorial causation; however, it is still not clear why some individuals are more susceptible than others to present foot lesions under the same environment. Social and individual behaviour is thought to play an important role. The aim of this study was to assess the possi...

Background: Lameness is a huge problem in intensive livestock production, leading to enormous losses terms of stress animals, less reproductive ability and increased chances mastitis. Zero grazing system needed for today’s but it has also led lameness chances, unnecessarily body condition score mastitis incidences. On the other hand, pasture promotes cows exhibit natural behaviour, which improv...

Milk production, fertility, longevity and health records, were extracted from databases of two milk recording organisations in the United Kingdom for the first three lactations of the Holstein-Friesian breed. These included data related to health events (mastitis and lameness), voluntarily recorded on a proportion of farms. The data were analysed to calculate disease incidence levels and to est...