The impact of lameness on milk production in Holstein Friesian Dairy cattle in Ireland

Abstract

The aim of thesis was to identify whether lameness had an effect on milk production in Holstein Friesian dairy cows in Ireland. I focused my work on three dairy herds in the midlands of Ireland, in counties Kilkenny and Laois. I visited the farms early in the lactation period, March 2015. I helped locomotion score the cows during this period; lame cows were identified and classified based on lame lesion. The lame cows were treated and returned to the herds. I obtained farm records from the lactation year of 2015, a ten-month period. I used three test day yield milk values for each cow (early, mid and late lactation). I removed any cow that did not stay non-lame for the duration of the lactation period from my dataset; this meant that I had 95 non-lame cows. I only included lame cows that were identified in the early lactation period, 37 cows. I separated the cows based on lactation; first lactation, second lactation and third lactation