Production diseases have severe economic impacts in dairy farms. Financial losses due to culling, decreased productivity, discarded milk as well as costs for treatment
and labour efforts are failure costs related to the occurrence of production diseases. To support decision making regarding herd health measures, failure costs caused by clinical and subclinical mastitis as well as mild and severe lameness were assessed on 60 organic dairy farms in Germany. Failure costs varied substantially between
farms. Decision-making in terms of animal health requires a farm specific calculation of failure costs to enable the identification of those measures that provide the best
cost-benefit relationship
