Comparing veterinary recommendations, farmer adoption, and costs of preventive measures for production diseases in Danish dairy herds

Diseases in dairy cows represent economic and environmental inefficiencies due to losses in productivity and longevity, and treatment costs. Total disease cost is the sum of failure cost (FC) and preventive cost (PC). Research has shown that though farmers' decisions are partially driven by economic incentives, they tend to underestimate FC, leading to underuse of preventive measures (PM) from a financial perspective. We examined PM and PC associated with lameness, mastitis and metabolic disorders. The objective of this study is to list PMs ranked by veterinarians and farmers, determine the agreement of respondents in each group, and examine whether farmer-reported PCs were associated with perceived effectiveness ratings. The veterinarians' ranked list included 141 PMs, and the farmers' 43 PMs. For lameness, mastitis and metabolic disorders, the PMs ranked highest by the veterinarians were systematic claw trimming, proper maintenance and settings of the milking system and rapid correction of diet on signs of problems. For the farmers, it was systematic claw trimming, clean bedding and phase-feeding of dry cows. The interrater agreement for PM ranked by veterinarians was κ= 0.22±0.002, for the farmers, it was κ= 0.01±0.021. All Spearman's rank correlations between farmer-reported PC and perceived effectiveness of selected PMs were lower than 0.2, and none of the correlations differed significantly from zero. Interrater agreement within veterinarians' and farmers' assessments of PM was low. Farmer-reported PCs were not clearly associated with farmers' perceived effectiveness ratings for lameness, mastitis, or metabolic disorders at the disease-complex level.