Effect of claw blocks on the healing duration and lesion severities of claw lesions in lame cows in Western Thailand

Vet World Vol.16 February-2023 Article-3

Research Article

Veterinary World, 16(2): 258-263

https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2023.258-263

Pipat Arunvipas¹, Teerachad Setkit¹, Jaturong Wongsanit¹, Theera Rukkwamsuk¹, Nitipong Homwong², and Anawat Sangmalee¹

1. Department of Large Animal and Wildlife Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Kasetsart University, Kamphaeng Saen Campus, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand.
2. Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture at Kamphaeng Saen, Kasetsart University, Kamphaeng Saen Campus, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand.

Background and Aim: Lameness is a major complication in dairy cattle affecting health and milk production. Several factors are found to contribute to this condition and specific treatments are required, including the process of claw trimming. The elevation of the claw, such as with the application of a claw block, was reported to be beneficial in the more severe cases. This study aimed to determine the efficiency of a claw block on claw lesions of lame cows in dairy farms in Western Thailand.

Materials and Methods: Locomotion scores of 376 dairy cows were determined by a veterinarian using a scale of 1–5 (1 = normal; 5 = severely lame) at the time of the visit. Cows with a score of 3 or greater were defined as clinically lame. In total, 134 clinically lame cows from 11 dairy farms in the Kanchanaburi and Ratchaburi provinces were included in the analysis. Claw lesions included a white line abscess, bruised sole, sole ulcer, sole abscess, white line separate, and double soles. Wooden or rubber claw blocks were applied to the unaffected claw of the same hoof as the injured claw of 116 cows, which were classified as the treatment cases, and 18 cows were left untreated and classified as the control cases. Each cow was checked on every week of the healing process for 2 months unless the cow was culled earlier. Survival analysis was based on the Kaplan–Meier estimator and Cox Proportional Hazard regression.

Results: The median healing time for lame cows with and without claw blocks was 21 and 36 days, respectively. After adjusting for the lesion severity and type, the lame cows with and without a claw block had hazard ratios of 2.16 and 3.08, respectively. The healing times between the four lesion types in cows with a claw block were not significantly different. The healing time was longer in lame cows, with a severity score of 4.

Conclusion: The results from this study reveal that the treatment of lame cows with claw blocks promoted the healing capacity of claw lesions after claw trimming. Keywords: claw block, claw lesion, dairy cows, lameness.

Keywords: claw block, claw lesion, dairy cows, lameness.

How to cite this article: Arunvipas P, Setkit T, Wongsanit J, Rukkwamsuk T, Homwong N, and Sangmalee A (2023) Effect of claw blocks on the healing duration and lesion severities of claw lesions in lame cows in Western Thailand, Veterinary World, 16(2): 258–263.

Received: 15-08-2022 Accepted: 23-12-2022 Published online: 11-02-2023

Corresponding author: Anawat Sangmalee E-mail: anawat.s@ku.th

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2023.258-263

Copyright: Arunvipas, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.