Find in Library

<p>The welfare of dairy cows is becoming increasingly important. While diseases like mastitis and lameness are common ailments, injuries to the tail tip go largely unnoticed. This study aimed to investigate whether tail tip lesions, which are mostly described in beef cattle, also occurred on <span class="inline-formula"><i>n</i>=5</span> dairy farms, along with determining what type and at what frequency. The study consisted of two phases. During the first part of the study, tail tips of 78 dairy cows were examined over a period of 6 months; based on these results, we developed a training card on tail tip lesions in dairy cows, which was used in part two of the study to train further examiners to inspect four more flocks. In total, we collected <span class="inline-formula"><i>n</i>=3587</span> tail records from <span class="inline-formula"><i>n</i>=513</span> Holstein and <span class="inline-formula"><i>n</i>= 128</span> Simmental dairy cows. The overall frequency regarding all types of lesions ranged between 84.0 % (<span class="inline-formula">±2.0</span>) and 94.1 % (<span class="inline-formula">±1.8</span>) in Holstein herds and between 97.0 % (<span class="inline-formula">±2.2</span>) and 99.0 % (<span class="inline-formula">±2.2</span>) in Simmental herds. To our knowledge, this is the first investigation of tail tip lesions in German dairy cows. We concluded that tail tip lesions might be a frequent yet unnoticed condition in German dairy cows.</p>