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Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
Welcome to the Moo's Room. Summer's starting to wind down, at least maybe with some research. My student interns are all starting to go back to school again, so kind of wrapping up a few research projects on polled genetics and virtual fencing. Again, we'll be doing more of those in the future, but maybe we'll talk about those later this fall.
But it's been hot and dry again here in Minnesota in the Midwest, and we're probably three weeks away from corn silage harvest yet. So maybe the first week, second week of September, we'll be harvesting corn silage here for our cows But I wanted to talk about a subject that kind of was on my mind recently with a lame cow that we had.
And maybe I talked about this in a previous episode about our lame Guernsey that we had at the county fair and Well, I took her to the hoof trimmer and we figured out that she had a little abscess in her toe, and so we cut that open and put a block on her and she's on the mend now. Doing much better, but the block will be on for another five weeks or so while she heals her toe.
And that really started getting me thinking about lameness again and some of the lameness issues that we've had in our herds, and I really wanted to talk about how we've maybe combated some of that in our dairy herd here in the last few years. 'Cause really, kind of at a glance, lameness is probably one of the greatest cost to dairy cattle, yet there's a lot of herds that maybe don't incorporate routine trimming schedules into herd management.
Although we have developed a schedule that doesn't really interrupt with some of our grazing herd schedules, going out to pasture, and we've really decided to make hoof health a priority in our herd
So lameness certainly is one of the costliest disorders in dairy cattle, and even with grazing herds. And, you know, we have some herd, part of our herd here that is grazing a lot and some that are in confinement. And if I think about it from a grazing perspective, many grazing herds really don't have a routine hoof trimming schedule because there's kind of this old adage that says, well, grazing cows don't really need to have their hooves trimmed as they wear them down while walking on pasture.
And the thought is, is that cows walk on pasture and cow lanes every day. They kind of wear their hooves and maybe maintain hoof length. However, that's maybe not as true. You know, herds here in the northern US, especially grazing herds, they're kind of confined during the wintertime because of snow, cold weather, and are fed stored feeds and total mix rations.
And especially with our herd, we have a grazing herd, and we have this kind of confinement herd, so it-- we kind of try to keep the schedule for both herds. Even the grazing herd is probably needed a little more help than, than what we thought. So I think hoof trimming is pretty important for farms, and they must really change their mindset with regards to trimming, especially in those grazing herds.
And I think it's pretty important, and I think if hooves are not really maintained or having normal trimming schedules, lameness certainly can result and this decreases milk production and can rede- reduce welfare of any type of cows
So it was really evident kind of why hoof trimming has been important in our herd And of course we're 300 milking cows, milk twice a daily, kind of a mid-size farm, uh, if you see it at that. And especially, you know, with our organic grazing herd, treatment options are sort of limited. So really developing a hoof trimming schedule was probably the most important thing that we could have ever done.
So up until about 2019, so we're gonna talk about quite a few years, and I have hoof trimming data across the last seven to kind of show you what's happened in our herd. But until about 2019, I think hoof trimming may have been kind of an afterthought, which was kinda common on most of the farms.
Typically, the cows were trimmed only if they needed attention, such as long hooves or had some problems, or maybe they were close to dry off or dry. And typically, we trimmed about 90 cows a year. So think about that. We're a 300-cow dairy only trimming maybe a third of the herd every year So during the spring of 2019, kind of disaster almost hit our dairy.
It was very rainy, which resulted in a lot of the cows walking through mud to pastures, and that's, can be quite typical in a lot of grazing herds, especially in the spring, depending on the weather. But however, because of the wet weather that year, there were a lot of cows that were lame with many hoof issues.
In our conventional herd, we had about 40 cows that had hoofing issues, and we were going through antibiotics quite frequently. We were going through X and L and Excede like it was going out of style to help with some of these cows in our conventional herd. Now, in our organic herd, that became more of a challenge because trying to manage hoof issues without the use of antibiotics can be quite challenging and results a lot of it in cleaning of hooves and blocking and wrapping and you name it.
There's lots of different things that can happen. So I think our farm really sacrificed in kind of production during that spring, which probably resulted in us being a little bit less profitable. So kind of as a result, I decided to get on a six-month maintenance trimming schedule, and we really developed that with our hoof trimmer here in central Minnesota
So in September of 2019, every cow in the herd was trimmed over a two-day period. So we trimmed 237 cows at the time over a two-day period. And of course, we recorded all the hoof issues, and we've continued to record all of those, especially in our management software program, DART software, Dairy Comp 305 as well, so we can track some of these issues that are happening with our cows.
So for the first trimming in that September, we had 15.6% of the herd have problems. So 37 cows out of 237 had issues. There were a lot of cows with thin soles, white line disease, fissures, toe ulcers, sole ulcers, and a few cows with digital dermatitis or hairy warts. But those were really not severe. I think most of the cows at that time had thin soles or white line.
So what's a thin sole? Well, it's abnormally thin sole, and it kind of feels spongy when firm pressure is applied, so it provides less cushion and protection for the sensitive tissues in the claw. So the sole may be a little bit more flexible, more translucent than normal, and can be quite tender, and really a thin sole increases the risk of bruising and maybe some ulcers as well.
So white line, so white line is damage at the white line. This is kind of the junction where the hoof wall meets the sole, and it can really range from red and yellow bruising in the white line to separation, a cavity, or an infected abscess, and it might look like discoloration, a widened or broken line, dark debris, or s- maybe some pus along the wall-to-sole junction A toll ulcer is just that.
It's an ulcer in the toll which the horn has lost com- or penetrated, and it exposes fresh or damaged skin or sensitive tissue underneath as well
Sole hemorrhage, we have a few but not many. That's basically bruising or bloodstained within the intact sole horn, so it's kind of discoloration, and hemorrhage can be an early signs of pressure damage and may precede an ulcer
So during that first trim, we saw a lot of white line and, and thin soles. And really that was probably because of the wet, muddy conditions, and that our cows walk long distances from the milking parlor. Our conventional cows maybe walk a quarter of a mile. Our grazing organic herd can walk three-quarters of a mile or more twice a day.
And because these cows often walk long distances, the prevalence of thin soles may be higher than maybe what's observed in confinement cows. And cows that have thin soles usually have a slow, painful walking motion, are kinda considered lame
And white line disease is one of the most common in grazing cattle, and they really appear as hemorrhages or separations or abscesses. And some of times these sole or toe ulcers can be very painful to our cows
So since we started a routine hoof trimming schedule, some of these issues have been reduced in the herd. So if I look at thin soles, we had eight back in September of 2019. We maybe went down December of 2021, we had six. But the last three trims, so May of '25, in the fall of '25 and into May of 2026, we haven't had a cow with a s- thin sole at all White line certainly has gone down.
It's maybe gone up a little bit in some, just kind of dependent, but in May we had one cow with white line. Our toe ulcers have all but disappeared. We had six in the beginning, and the last five or six trims we've had zero cows. So really has gone down quite a bit. Now our digital dermatitis or hairy heel warts We have a few here and there, not very many.
It's probably not our biggest issue. We don't use a footbath at our dairy at all. We had one cow with a hairy wart out of three hundred and ten cows trimmed in May, so really not much of an issue. Before that, the first, the three previous trims, we had zero cows. Fissures for the first time, it's kind of one or two here and there.
Maybe the last couple trims we've had one cow, but not very many at all. Sole ulcers, we had two cows in May with sole ulcers, so not very many at all. Hemorrhage, we maybe have been ticking up in sole hemorrhages here, maybe because of a lot of wet conditions in our pasture. We had four in May with sole hemorrhages, and that's been kind of around three or four cows out of three hundred.
So it's kind of been up and down. But if you look at the problem rate, so cows with problems, fifteen point six the first time. If you go two years later, we're at about nine percent issues. Sometimes we're around ten to twelve percent depending on the year In the last two Mays, so the last two springs, 2% and 3% problem rate with our cows.
So we've had very little issues since we started. Of course, we're still gonna have some issues, but not very many. Now, one thing that we've seen on an uptick has been corkscrews. We didn't have very many of those in the beginning, but this last trim here in May of 2026, seven cows had a corkscrew hoof So if you look at it across our total time period since we've been doing this for the last seven years, so routine trimming twice a year, every cow gets trimmed.
Our overall lesion rate has been 6.8%, so quite low. Quite low. So I'm quite happy with that situation
So really since we started this routine trimming, some of our issues have kind of gone away. And obviously we've tracked all of this data and our antibiotic use, especially in our conventional herd, has gone down. We're not treating as many cows that are lame anymore. We have a few here and there that pop up So how was the prevalence of many of these hoof issues reduced?
Quite simply, it was because of proper maintenance trimming every six months for every cow, all lactating cows, all dry cows. Obviously, this maintenance trimming might cost more on trimming day, but it certainly saves our farm money in the long run with reduced vet bills and increased milk production and improved cow welfare.
And I think one thing that we may don't, don't think about is it brings satisfaction to all the farm workers because they don't have to deal with all these cows that have hoof issues anymore So I think every herd should be on a trim schedule at least twice a year. You need to record the data to ensure all cows are trimmed and tracking any hoof issues.
I think it's pretty important to work with your hoof trimmer to determine each farm's schedule and ensure all of the cows are trimmed correctly, and we've done that. We've worked with our hoof trimmer, we've developed the schedule, and we've stuck to it since 2019 So I think normal hoof trimming can really reduce and prevent lameness in all dairy herds, and then certainly improves the longevity of cows, which helps improve farm profitability.
So I think really now is probably the time to work with your hoof trimmer to develop this maintenance trimming schedule, and I-- you know, why wait? Why wait? Because I think it will only improve your herd into the future. So hopefully you learned a little bit about hoof trimming and why we continue to be on a twice-a-year schedule for hoof trimming.
And with that, if you have any comments, questions, or scathing rebuttals, feel free to contact me at The Moo's Room. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M @umn.edu, or find us on the web, University of Minnesota Livestock Extension, or UMN WCROC Dairy. With that, hope you have a great week. Bye.