Footbathing

lazy farmer · Dec 7, 2019

We have been footbathing roughly ( and it is roughly) 4 times a week.
We have been using up until quite recently 10 litres of formalin in around 250 litres of water. We have since cut this back to 7 litres per 250 litres.
Anyway..... today I finished the drying off trim of the whole herd and found zero cows with any sign of digi. So is there any scope to either reduce the frequency of footbathing or reduce the concentration of the foot bath further?
Thanks lazy

Devon lad · Dec 7, 2019

We are spring calving xbreds. I foot bath every fortnight April to October and every week October to April, absolutely no digi last 2 years, 25L formalin in 1000L of water.

vantage · Dec 7, 2019

lazy farmer said:
We have been footbathing roughly ( and it is roughly) 4 times a week.
We have been using up until quite recently 10 litres of formalin in around 250 litres of water. We have since cut this back to 7 litres per 250 litres.
Anyway..... today I finished the drying off trim of the whole herd and found zero cows with any sign of digi. So is there any scope to either reduce the frequency of footbathing or reduce the concentration of the foot bath further?
Thanks lazy

4% is quite a high concentration but has obviously worked for you. I’d be minded to reduce concentration further but keep bathing intensity. FYI, my herd go through the bath daily, 2% formalin, do not want a digi flare up. When out they go through at most twice a week.

Rossymons · Dec 7, 2019

I'd echo above. We ran a low concentration but kept the frequency.

We also had a "washbath" and a treatment bath. We put formalin in both but the treatment bath was always cleanest afterwards.

jerseycowsman · Dec 8, 2019

lazy farmer said:
We have been footbathing roughly ( and it is roughly) 4 times a week.
We have been using up until quite recently 10 litres of formalin in around 250 litres of water. We have since cut this back to 7 litres per 250 litres.
Anyway..... today I finished the drying off trim of the whole herd and found zero cows with any sign of digi. So is there any scope to either reduce the frequency of footbathing or reduce the concentration of the foot bath further?
Thanks lazy

We haven’t footbathed for 10 years, we don’t get dermatitis anymore. We had a bit when we moved here, hence the footbath. But seem to have wiped it out now.
White line is 85% of ours, the rest is mainly foul with just the odd sole ulcer

dinderleat · Dec 8, 2019

lazy farmer said:
We have been footbathing roughly ( and it is roughly) 4 times a week.
We have been using up until quite recently 10 litres of formalin in around 250 litres of water. We have since cut this back to 7 litres per 250 litres.
Anyway..... today I finished the drying off trim of the whole herd and found zero cows with any sign of digi. So is there any scope to either reduce the frequency of footbathing or reduce the concentration of the foot bath further?
Thanks lazy

You won’t of got rid of it you just have it under control, I would say carry on with frequency but possibly reduce concentration. Never worth the chance if a flare up.

Grass_rats · Dec 8, 2019

jerseycowsman said:
We haven’t footbathed for 10 years, we don’t get dermatitis anymore. We had a bit when we moved here, hence the footbath. But seem to have wiped it out now.
White line is 85% of ours, the rest is mainly foul with just the odd sole ulcer

White line can be stopped with foot bathing especially during the dry period

40 cases out of 600 cows here and the big drop in lameness came after foot bathing the dry cows 5 days a week

Milkers are 5 days a week too

Devon lad · Dec 8, 2019

Grass_rats said:
White line can be stopped with foot bathing especially during the dry period

40 cases out of 600 cows here and the big drop in lameness came after foot bathing the dry cows 5 days a week

Milkers are 5 days a week too

I have heard that before, but when I queried Neil Chesterton he said footbathing does not help white line. But I just wonder if there is just too little research into it?

som farmer · Dec 8, 2019

digi can come from anywhere, it just appeared in our closed herd, no other cattle used where the dairy was, just came, 25 years later still battling it, but not a closed herd now !

Cows 'n grass · Dec 8, 2019

jerseycowsman said:
We haven’t footbathed for 10 years, we don’t get dermatitis anymore. We had a bit when we moved here, hence the footbath. But seem to have wiped it out now.
White line is 85% of ours, the rest is mainly foul with just the odd sole ulcer

Snap. White line and foul would account for 95% of my lame cows.

Grass_rats · Dec 8, 2019

Devon lad said:
I have heard that before, but when I queried Neil Chesterton he said footbathing does not help white line. But I just wonder if there is just too little research into it?

They say that and then in the next breath say lameness is a disease......

Some correlation there in my mind, we have done everything from routine trimming, not footbathing, different solutions, any thing and everything and it’s come back to footbathing 5 days a week and trimming any long toes before drying off and the same again before mating, other than that we hardly touch them

Our biggest help has been record keeping, one thing that stood out was when the cows had to start crossing a road in mid summer there was a spike of about 15 cases

jerseycowsman · Dec 8, 2019

Grass_rats said:
They say that and then in the next breath say lameness is a disease......

Some correlation there in my mind, we have done everything from routine trimming, not footbathing, different solutions, any thing and everything and it’s come back to footbathing 5 days a week and trimming any long toes before drying off and the same again before mating, other than that we hardly touch them

Our biggest help has been record keeping, one thing that stood out was when the cows had to start crossing a road in mid summer there was a spike of about 15 cases

We get problems in wet weather, we’ve had only 50% of the white line in the last 2 dry years. Until I bought them in this autumn, it was starting to spike again, as this autumn as we all know, was rather wet

jimmer · Dec 8, 2019

DD lies in wait in the hoof tissues for up to 4 months before breaking out and being infectious again, so in theory if you are 0 cases in ANY stock for that time then the chance of more are low
Or so have been told

Devon lad · Dec 8, 2019

jerseycowsman said:
We get problems in wet weather, we’ve had only 50% of the white line in the last 2 dry years. Until I bought them in this autumn, it was starting to spike again, as this autumn as we all know, was rather wet

Exactly the same for us

Hill Dairy · Dec 8, 2019

We've been cutting back on formalin and just using potassium permanganate which was working well for DD but have now got a fowl outbreak and wishing I hadn't cut back as much on the formalin. What are people using to treat fowl most effectivly do we need to inject or should we use an antibiotic foot bath and then move on to formalin?

Devon lad · Dec 8, 2019

Hill Dairy said:
We've been cutting back on formalin and just using potassium permanganate which was working well for DD but have now got a fowl outbreak and wishing I hadn't cut back as much on the formalin. What are people using to treat fowl most effectivly do we need to inject or should we use an antibiotic foot bath and then move on to formalin?

Cows are out grazing? Ours get foul when wetish weather on our sandy soils, normally treat with 3-5 days penstrep, if youngstock are on kale I’ll use ultra pen

Hill Dairy · Dec 8, 2019

No cows are in were fine when out. I think theres in the region of 20 showing signs of fowl so not that tempting to have that many out the tank. It's the worst outbreak we've ever had. First year with most cubicals on mattresses and sawdust rather than sand but not sure if that's related to it. Have you or anyone successfully treated it through a footbath before?

Headless chicken · Dec 8, 2019

Hill Dairy said:
No cows are in were fine when out. I think theres in the region of 20 showing signs of fowl so not that tempting to have that many out the tank. It's the worst outbreak we've ever had. First year with most cubicals on mattresses and sawdust rather than sand but not sure if that's related to it. Have you or anyone successfully treated it through a footbath before?

yes but it depends how bad they are. If they’re in pain they need ABS and pain relief

Hill Dairy · Dec 8, 2019

Headless chicken said:
yes but it depends how bad they are. If they’re in pain they need ABS and pain relief

Yeah we've been giving the worst ones pain relief mite step in with abs on the ones affected worst.

lazy farmer · Dec 8, 2019

jerseycowsman said:
We get problems in wet weather, we’ve had only 50% of the white line in the last 2 dry years. Until I bought them in this autumn, it was starting to spike again, as this autumn as we all know, was rather wet

Can agree with that. Due to the unique way in which it rarely rains here we had only one lame cow with WL here between April and late September then we had 11 more during the wet period during October. But none since

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