Lameness doesn’t always make a loud entrance. It sometimes creeps in quietly, cutting into milk checks and cow health before you know it. A small hitch in a cow’s step can quickly spiral into less feed intake, lower production, more treatments, breeding problems and cows leaving the herd too soon.
The impact isn’t just on the animals. It hits the bottom line hard, too. Each lame cow racks up costs day after day, with researchers estimating losses of about $4.50 per cow, per day.¹,²
Calculate that expense across a herd, and you’re talking about a huge cost over a year’s time. For example, a herd of 2,000 cows with a 20% lameness incidence experiences about 400 lame cows at any given time. Multiply 400 by $4.50 for a cost of $1,800 per day. Over 12 months, that cost adds up to $657,000.
These figures are eye-opening. But they’re also changeable.
SmartSight Locomotion Monitoring, powered by Nedap, enables dairies to spot lameness before cows show visible signs, helping herds mitigate the effects of lameness sooner than ever before.
The system uses advanced artificial intelligence to continuously and reliably monitor hoof health, assessing each cow’s gait with high-resolution camera data, then shares this information with herd management software. Users can create proactive action lists and monitor cow recovery with these details.
Proof on the hoof
“SmartSight has been a game changer. It reduces stress on cows, improves efficiency for us and ensures lameness never gets out of control. If you asked me to remove it tomorrow, I’d be lost. It has become an essential part of how we run the farm,” says Greg Kowalewski, herd manager of 2,300-cow Aurora-Oakwood Dairy, Auburn, New York.
Kowalewski and hoof trimmer Scott Olsenwik swear by the SmartSight Locomotion Monitoring system.
“One of the biggest challenges of a hoof trimmer is catching these cows at an early stage in the lameness cycle before they drop in milk production or it affects reproduction,” Olsenwik explains.
SmartSight has transformed that process. The system continuously monitors cows and flags subtle changes in locomotion before they become visible to the human eye.
“With SmartSight, we focus on cows that show a decline in locomotion scores,” notes Kowalewski. Healthy cows can wait; cows that need attention go straight to the trimmer. This has reduced unnecessary trims and helped us catch lesions sooner.”
Previously, lameness detection at Aurora-Oakwood Dairy depended on farm staff watching cows during routine work. With SmartSight, the technology monitors cows three times a day every day of the week, greatly reducing the human hours previously required.
“With SmartSight, we’re finding cows quicker and they’re not becoming as severely lame,” says Kowalewski. “The system is saving us time, reducing stress for the cows and keeping milk in the tank.”
He adds, “Part of our philosophy is we adopt technology, but only if it works. SmartSight is certainly something we can believe in, and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to do a better job identifying lame cows and having a stronger hoof health program.”
For Aurora-Oakwood Dairy, the bottom line is simple: healthier cows, less labor and more milk.
To learn more about SmartSight Locomotion Monitoring, visit nedap-livestockmanagement.com/smartsight/.
[1] Wilshire JA, Bell NJ, 2009. An economic review of cattle lameness. Cattle Practice 17:2 136-141.
[2] Thomsen P., et al. 2023. Prevalence of lameness in dairy cows: A literature review. Vet. Journal. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tvjl.2023.105975.
