[Economic losses from hoof diseases in cows]

Investigations were carried out under productional conditions with a total of 100 high-producing cows in lactation to disclose the effect of diseased hooves or hooves that had not been taken care of over the period in the stable as well as the effect of hoof trimming and treatment on the daily and monthly milk yield and the total losses associated with deformations and diseases in 20,980 cows. It was found that 'stable' hooves and disease processes developing in them and in the body as a whole lowered the milk yield by 3.3 l, on an average, per cow (4.5 l, respectively). Trimming of hooves and medical treatment were found to avoid the drop of the daily milk yield along with the recovering all losses and coming back to normal levels. Opportunely used treatment prevented the losses associated with live weight, lowered the percent of premature culling and emergency slaughter and reduced or fully ruled out the death cases. Economic losses could be kept to a minimum if the efforts described above ate coupled with periodic hoof trimming (at least twice a month).