Genetic parameters for lameness and claw and leg diseases in dairy cows

Lameness in dairy cows is a serious welfare and economic problem in dairy production. The majority of all lameness cases seem to stem from claw and leg diseases. Indirect selection on claw health potentially might be feasible with lameness as indicator trait. Therefore, the genetic parameters for the 2 traits were estimated by applying both linear and threshold models. In addition, the impact of environmental effects, parity, and stage of lactation was analyzed. In total, 8,299 locomotion scores (1-5) of 326 dairy cows and 708 claw and leg disease diagnoses or treatments of 335 dairy cows from the dairy research farm Karkendamm (Institute of Animal Breeding and Husbandry, Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel, Germany) were analyzed. Lameness was defined by a locomotion score of ≥ 3. Days in milk were limited to the range of 10 to 350 d. To quantify the effect of the claw disease digital dermatitis, a second data set without this disease was built; 52.8 and 36.4% (without digital dermatitis) of the cows were treated at least once; 47.2% of the cows were clinically lame at least at one time. Genetic parameters were estimated bivariately using the average information restricted maximum likelihood procedure as implemented in the DMU software package. The heritability estimates derived from the threshold model were about twice as large as the values based on the linear model. For lameness, the threshold heritability increased from 0.15 to 0.22 and decreased for the diseases from 0.24 to 0.22 after exclusion of digital dermatitis. The genetic correlations were high and even increased from 0.60 to 0.72 after the exclusion of digital dermatitis, which suggests that lameness (locomotion score) seems to be a good indicator for claw and leg diseases. Digital dermatitis seems to affect the mobility of the dairy cow less strongly than other claw and leg diseases.