Incidence of hoof affections in cattle of North Gujarat

The present study was done in North Gujarat to investigate occurrence of hoof affections in 4862 cattle, of which 1140 (23.44%) had various hoof affections with higher incidence in HF crossbreds (26.18%) followed by Kankrej and Gir (19.78%) and Jersey crossbreds (14.58%). Non-parous cattle had minimum lesions (6.84%), while maximum were in second lactation (24.64%). The incidence was higher in animals reared on pakka floor (39.40%) followed by kachcha and semi pakka type (31.56 and 11.22%), and also higher in animals fed on >6 kg concentrate/day (90.21%) in comparison to moderate and low concentrate fed animals (20.87 and 10.64%). The involvement of hind limbs was more (57.01%) than the fore limbs (42.98%). The occurrence of hoof lesions in lateral and medial claws was 33.33 and 23.68% in hind limbs and 14.91% and 28.07% in fore limbs, respectively. The overgrown hooves accounted for 56.40% of hoof affections, followed by cork screw horn (22.54%), horizontal (5.17%) and vertical (4.91%) fissures, interdigital (4.29%) and white line (3.24%) affections, heel horn erosion (2.01%), sole haemorrhage (0.96%) and laminitis (0.43%). The lameness score improved after treatment in all categories of the lameness.