Dairy cow management and welfare: Practices on dairy operations in the United States that may impact dairy cow welfare, lameness, and beef quality assurance

Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned with where their food is coming from, and they are looking for evidence that the animals raised in agriculture are not suffering in the process. Dairy cows are handled very frequently, and therefore animal handling has the potential to greatly impact the welfare of dairy cows. The purpose of this PhD program was to investigate which management practices were in place on dairy operations in the US that may impact dairy cow welfare, lameness, and beef quality assurance.;A large portion of this PhD program included working with USDA's National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS) Dairy 2014 study, which surveyed dairy operations in the US to gather information concerning the health and management of dairy cattle. A goal of this survey was to describe management practices that are in place on US dairy operations that may impact dairy cow welfare, including a comparison between organic and non-organic operations. The objectives of this portion were to: 1) describe housing and management practices on US dairy operations that impact dairy cow welfare, and 2) identify changes in housing and management practices on US dairy operations that impact dairy cow welfare from the NAHMS 2007 Dairy study to the NAHMS 2014 Dairy study.;The results from this survey highlight different aspects of dairy management that can be modified to improve dairy cow welfare. Expanding educational efforts, aimed at both dairy owners and personnel, can help to ensure that information presented in scientific literature reaches dairy producers, where it can be applied on the farm. Stressing the benefits of certain management practices on dairy cow welfare, such as installing rubber matting over concrete or having standard operating procedures in place for handling nonambulatory cows, can help to ensure that dairy producers have the knowledge and tools necessary to provide their cows with the best possible care.;The objective of the second part of the NAHMS dairy 2014 study was to determine the association between different housing and management practices and the prevalence of lameness, hock lesions, and thin cows on US dairy operations. The prevalence of lameness and hock lesions in the current study was lower than prevalence levels previously reported. Despite the relatively low prevalence estimates found, many associations were identified between dairy operation characteristics and the prevalence of lameness, hock lesions, and thin cows on US dairy operations. Large dairy operations had fewer lame cows than medium operations. Operations that housed cows on pasture had fewer lame cows than operations that housed cows in freestall or tie-stall barns, and fewer severely lame cows than those that housed cows in open/dry lots or freestall barns. Hock lesions were associated with housing type, with open/dry lots having a lower percentage of cows with hock lesions than the other housing types. Using sand as a bedding material for lactating dairy cows was protective against hock lesions, with the prevalence being lower than on operations that used straw/hay/corn cobs or sawdust/wood products. Additionally, dairy operations that used a nutritionist to balance rations for lactating dairy cows had a fewer thin cows than those where the dairy owner or other personnel balanced rations. The results from this study highlight different management practices on dairy operations that can be implemented to impact the prevalence of lameness, hock lesions, and thin cows on dairy operations in the US.;Lameness in dairy cattle is usually identified by judging the locomotion of dairy cows and assigning a score to the cow based on different characteristics of the animal's gait. There are multiple scoring systems that can be used to score dairy cow locomotion, which differ by the number of categories in each system and the classification of each category. A portion of this PhD program included a study involving dairy industry experts throughout the US and dairy farm personnel in Colorado, investigating reliability and agreement among three different locomotion scoring systems and which system participants preferred to use and why. The objectives of this study were: 1) determine differences in intra- and interrater reliability among three different locomotion scoring systems for dairy cows; and 2) gather information pertaining to user preference among the three locomotion scoring systems. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).