Unfortunately i can't give an answer to your question.

But i would be interested why you see a real market for such solutions. Is there any legal / attitude change that would trigger request from farmers in France / Europe? I do not question the animal welfare implication - only want to understand, why farmers would do care about it more now than in the past.

Might be 'off topic' so please answer to: ab(at)bri-c.de

Andreas 

Andreas,

Your answer may be slightly off topic, nevertheless it is an interesting point. I do not see a change in legal attitude, although a change is needed. I find, that part of our job is to make farmers care about lameness by for instance showing farmers how much lameness affects the animals, or how much lameness is actually costing them. Part of our job is also to point the way to solutions, i.e. how to detect lameness and how to act on the risk factors - here the European Welfare Quality work may point the way (http://www.welfarequality.net/everyone/44893/7/0/22).

I have been involved in dairy lameness for about 10 years now, and no lameness decline has been seen. New research projects keep popping up, and new technologies are tested constantly. The reason for my asking about marketed technologies is that more studies are now asking farmers which technologies they buy and for what reasons. The last I saw was a survey asking 109 farmers, and

I hope not to sound cynical, but from my personal view lameness is an old problem that rise with the change to foremost indoor holdings and artificial floors whilst forcing faster breeding schemes in the late 70s of the last century. In Germany since the early eighties we know about the shameful claw hardness.

Advance in milking technology (milking robots in particular) will aggravate the lameness problem in near futeure since farmers will spend less time with the cows and less see them walking in the stable or inspect their claws at the milking point. Furthermore melting robots will reduce total walking times (and time outside of buildings in Laufhöfen or in the field) because the cows are required to be nearby the milking robot to run it cost effectively.

A future switch to controlled climate in dairy husbandry is probable caused by the combination of less free range times and climate change that inflicts with production. That won't help about lameness.

I worked in the field of animal welfare for 15+ years (mainly poultry/pigs/transport/slaughter) and i learned that resistance in farmers lobbies is high and you need legal requirements and proper enforcement to combine with education to change even smallest details in husbandry. (To my experience science alone does not help because of the paradigm of scientific prove in the field of multi causal - long terming phenomenas.)

i might point you at the thesis of Nicole Beuskers, summarizing on lameness in dairy cows. http://elib.tiho-hannover.de/dissertations/beuskern_ws07.html but maybe you know it.

Edit: And to this approach to cow lameness from a more clinical pov, highlighting the need for early lameness detection: http://elib.tiho-hannover.de/dissertations/janssens_ss12.html

lameness & fertility: http://elib.tiho-hannover.de/dissertations/wiedenhoeftd_ws05.html

Andreas

(sorry for sounding such disillusioned)

Dear Vivi,

the only technology I heard about is thermal imaging, applied to detect lameness in horses. I quickly read about it in the past also for cattle regarding (not really sure now)detection of mastitis or other infections. I just tried now to Google and found this link http://www.journalofdairyscience.org/article/S0022-0302(14)00359-2/pdf. For sure it's something that still needs to be applied on large scale.

Hope it helps!

Best regards,

Stefano

A know that the technology has been developed by Dr. Ilan Halachmi, from ARO Israel. It might be commercially avialable.

You can contact him at:  [email protected]

Hi Vivi,

There are a number of pedometers/activity meters available that can be used to detect lameness. Companies that make/supply them include Afi, Delaval, Lely and Boumatic, as you mentioned. Lely also has a scale in the floor of the robot and they developed software to track body weight changes associated with health problems, such as lameness.

Cheers,

Coral

We have developed four quadrant weighing scale with algorithm for detecting lameness in cows. This works on shifting of weight in the four legs during standing.

We will have the product soon. 

Hi Vivi,

I am actually doing  a review of lameness detection/diagnosis tools/technologies at the moment. So far, as far as I have read in the literature, only the StepMatrix, and some pedometers and accelerometers as someone has mentioned, are commercially available. This is not to say there are not others, they have just not been demonstrated as such in the literature as being commercially available.

Vivi, I would be interested to read the report regarding farmers using technologies for lameness detection.

Kate, the paper on farmers use of technology: Borcers and Bewley, 2015: An assessment of producer precision dairy farming technology use, prepurchase considerations, and usefulness. Journal of Dairy Science 98, 4198-205.

Jeff Bewley has a Research Gate profile.

You also want to find papers by A. Van Nuffel. In particular her thesis from 2014. It is about lameness detection technologies.

Thanks Vivi.