Glenda Pereira: [00:10]
Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. This is your host, Dr. Glenda Pereira, an assistant professor at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and the dairy specialist, as well as an assistant professor of animal science within the School of Food and Agriculture. And today, we have a return guest. We have Jacki Martinez Perkins, and we are going to be talking about a fun topic, I think, because it’s critical for all species: lameness.
Glenda Pereira: [00:37]
And so if we can’t walk to feed, if we can’t get up, lie down, we’re uncomfortable, we’re not gonna be productive. So I think we haven’t covered lameness before on the Farmcast, and I really like this topic. Jacki has been doing some programming about this topic with folks in the state of Maine, so I thought I’d bring her in and have this conversation. I was just mentioning this to Jacki before we started talking, how everything we talk about today will kind of center around farm hygiene. Right?
Glenda Pereira: [01:08]
So it’s not only critical that you have a good foot bath in place. You also have to have a hoof-trimming protocol or schedule in place, a dry environment, nutrition, etcetera. All of those things together are what help you reduce lameness in your animals overall. So that’s just where I kinda wanna start the conversation, to give folks a little bit of insight about what we’re gonna be talking about today. So, Jacki, some of the programming you’ve been doing about lameness has been with a livestock species specifically, and then dairy as well.
Glenda Pereira: [01:42]
And you brought some good materials with you today, and you’re gonna walk us through some of the reasons why we care about lameness. It’s like I mentioned at the start of everything. Right? The animal needs to be able to function on their own, and lameness is at the forefront of that.
Jacki Perkins: [01:57]
Hi, everybody.
Glenda Pereira: [01:58]
Welcome back.
Jacki Perkins: [01:59]
I am so excited that you’re as nerdy about hooves and lameness as I am. I am, in my private life, also an equestrian. And so I might be a little bit nerdier about it than Glenda because horses. Yeah. Very human.
Glenda Pereira: [02:11]
That’s what’s really critical in horses as well.
Jacki Perkins: [02:13]
Yeah. It tends to be that we ask them to do things. First of all, they’re single-toed. The rest of our livestock species are two-toed. And horses aren’t considered livestock by the USDA, but bees are. Chickens aren’t either. Poultry is not considered livestock.
Jacki Perkins: [02:26]
I digress. And I can still trim chicken toes and spurs, and you should. But knowing how to trim a horse’s foot can be more important because they’re not two-toed. They’re one-toed. And by being one-toed, they get less circulation, and it means that the external trim is that much more important to the internal structures.
Jacki Perkins: [02:46]
But, anyway, we’re asking them to do those things. Why, then, do we care about our animals that are on pasture? And from an organic standpoint, if they’re walking around, why should we care? First of all, they grow. They’re like fingernails.
Jacki Perkins: [03:02]
They grow all the time. Oh, well, what about, like, sheep and goats? Sheep and goats evolved in the rocky desert, the same as horses. They were wearing them off all the time. So our pastures and our nutritional requirements for production can be part of the problem.
Jacki Perkins: [03:21]
Our pastures are wet. We push protein and energy pretty hard in our production animals. And I can talk about that in a minute because that’s, like, form and function. We worry about the welfare of our animals. We want them to be comfortable.
Jacki Perkins: [03:33]
Personally, I have very small feet, and people comment on it all the time. Oh, you have tiny feet. Yeah. I know they hurt. That’s why I sit down so much.
Jacki Perkins: [03:41]
We want our animals to be comfortable. I know some farmers who say they take incredibly good care of their animals specifically because it benefits their bottom line. Yeah. Yes, they care about their animals, but they also care about their business and their ability to be sustainable into the future.
Jacki Perkins: [03:58]
And so welfare is a very important factor of that. An animal will not grow, will not produce if it’s not happy. Yep. Quite frankly, neither will plants. So we do the best we can to take care of the things that are in our care.
Jacki Perkins: [04:13]
Maintenance is cheap compared with treating animals. It’s just another reason why I subscribe to organic farming, because it’s all about maintenance, and it’s cheap. Preventative care is way cheaper than treatment because, as soon as you’re in the realm of treating, you’ve lost the amount of production that they could have accomplished at that stage in their life. And you’re now spending money on treatment options and your time, or somebody else’s time that you’re paying for, to care for that animal. Quite frankly, genetics can only go so far.
Jacki Perkins: [04:45]
With our sheep and our goats, we think about our genetics. Even with our cows, we think about our genetics in order to maximize their hoof health because we don’t wanna have to think about it that often. It’s my own personal opinion that our livestock species have one up on our horse breeders. I think our horse breeders are looking for other things. Feet aren’t always on the list.
Jacki Perkins: [05:03]
Right. Because, by God, that’s what farriers are for. Be nice to your farrier. That is a hot, sweaty, thankless job, especially if your horse is wiggling around. And that goes for your hoof trimmer, too.
Jacki Perkins: [05:12]
The hoof trimmers for livestock, cows specifically, will show up with a containment option, usually a tilt trailer or a pneumatic trailer that lifts the cow and can restrain them so that they can work safely. Yeah. Both the cow and the person can be safe.
Glenda Pereira: [05:26]
Because safety is not just for the people. Right. It’s as much for the animal. And especially if a cow has a lesion, it’s gonna hurt.
Jacki Perkins: [05:34]
It’s gonna hurt, so she’s gonna flail.
Glenda Pereira: [05:35]
They’re all uncomfortable. They’re gonna be potentially kicking and stomping.
Jacki Perkins: [05:38]
Yeah. And it’s very hard to have that conversation with them of, “I promise it’ll feel better when I’m done.”
Glenda Pereira: [05:42]
Right. Yeah.
Jacki Perkins: [05:44]
So, for those horse owners out there, be kind to your farrier. A fan goes a long way. Even in the winter, it’s a hot, sweaty job. And properly train your horse.
Glenda Pereira: [05:54]
And is there a list that you maintain, Jacki, of people that folks can reach out to for hoof-trimming services?
Jacki Perkins: [06:03]
Technically, that brings me to my point. A lot of states in the United States require that you are certified or trained in a certain way. Maine is not one of those states. You can learn on your own. And we, as a population, tend to be stubborn and individualistic. So you can definitely learn how to trim hooves.
Jacki Perkins: [06:23]
It’s what I did. I stared at my farrier, who I loved as a kid, asked him a bunch of questions, and said, you know what? I’m pretty sure I can figure that out. I lost a lot of skin off my knuckles and did some bleeding, and I also took the course when I went to Vermont Technical College. That particular school is very hands-on.
Jacki Perkins: [06:41]
Yeah. And so there was an optional rotation on hoof trimming. So I did that rotation. And, yes, I’m out of practice, but I understand the basics of it. Yeah.
Jacki Perkins: [06:50]
And the equipment, tools, and timing. We don’t need fancy, expensive tools in order to trim cows. One, you can build a homemade chute. I know a farmer who also works off-grid. Mister Jason Tessier welded his own chute in order to trim hooves or even do health checks, so it can do double duty.
Jacki Perkins: [07:11]
You can have infrastructure that you build yourself that doubles as
Glenda Pereira: [07:15]
A restraining device for
Jacki Perkins: [07:16]
your animals. Yep. Yep. And if you put enough thought into it,
Glenda Pereira: [07:18]
it can be really, really nice. Yeah. And there are a few schools. So I know that New York just had a hoof-trimming school specific to dairy. I just wanted to note that anatomy and physiology are really critical because you need to understand what is soft tissue and what is hard tissue.
Glenda Pereira: [07:37]
And so, like you said, you practiced and visually observed a lot. And so
Jacki Perkins: [07:42]
Well, also, my mother’s a veterinarian, so I got anatomy and physiology from the time I was born. Yep. But take a little time and nerd out on it. Yeah.
Jacki Perkins: [07:51]
And don’t do it on Facebook. Don’t nerd out on it on Facebook. That’s a pit. Yeah. Do it from anatomy books.
Jacki Perkins: [08:01]
Yeah. What I would recommend is: don’t take just anyone’s advice on hoof trimming, because opinions are as plentiful as bums. Yeah. And there are just so many opinions out there. And if you’re not following anatomy and physiology as they were written before opinions became so popular,
Glenda Pereira: [08:23]
Your animals can be even
Jacki Perkins: [08:24]
more uncomfortable. They can be even more uncomfortable. Yep. But you’re talking
Glenda Pereira: [08:28]
about maintenance. So hoof trimming is part of that, but so are foot baths. Yeah. And having one depends on your farm, right? It’s gonna depend on the types of organisms and pathogens you have. But most dairies run a foot bath potentially once per week or twice per week, again, depending.
Glenda Pereira: [08:49]
But it can help with some of that preventative stuff. I don’t know if you have any recommendations for organic farmers as well, and if you wanted to just put in a plug here. We can share more in the show notes. But that’s part of the maintenance as well.
Jacki Perkins: [09:01]
Absolutely. One of the things that people are most surprised about when they’re asking me about organic practices, especially hoof care, is the fact that we do allow copper sulfate hoof baths. And that’s super preventative for things like hairy heel warts, which are really, really contagious, and hoof rot and all the other things. I am impressed that people are running them once a week. We had hairy heel warts on our farm when I was a kid.
Jacki Perkins: [09:27]
And by God, they’d run through it on their way out of the parlor. And I will say that
Glenda Pereira: [09:31]
That, too. Yeah. Right. It just depends, and I think, too, on the maintenance of your foot bath. And if all you can do is run it once per week, because once that dilutes, if cows are running through it every day, they’re depositing manure in that for sure.
Jacki Perkins: [09:45]
Oh,
Glenda Pereira: [09:46]
yeah. So you need to make sure that’s kept up.
Jacki Perkins: [09:47]
Dump it
Glenda Pereira: [09:48]
and put
Jacki Perkins: [09:48]
new stuff in.
Glenda Pereira: [09:49]
Right. Yeah. Making sure that it’s actually working and it’s not just a sloppy, watery mess. Yeah.
Jacki Perkins: [09:55]
Yeah. For sure. Yep. Don’t think you’re doing something and not actually accomplishing it.
Glenda Pereira: [09:59]
Exactly.
Jacki Perkins: [10:00]
And along those lines, one thing that always drove me nuts when I was a kid was that we would trim and treat hooves in the parlor. Please don’t do that. One, it stresses them out.
Glenda Pereira: [10:10]
And it creates a negative association with a place they have to go every day.
Jacki Perkins: [10:14]
And it’s hard.
Glenda Pereira: [10:15]
Twice a day.
Jacki Perkins: [10:15]
It’s just hard. Yeah. It’s not ideal. So if you have a separate system where you’re doing all of that maintenance
Glenda Pereira: [10:24]
Yeah.
Jacki Perkins: [10:25]
work, it’s safer for everybody.
Glenda Pereira: [10:27]
The last thing on that maintenance list, I think, is just keeping a dry environment. Yeah. So, in the parlor, right, make sure they potentially have a mat. We’re talking about dairy cows specifically. And in the parlor, then, they’re not standing on concrete where they might be for
Jacki Perkins: [10:43]
Yeah. Yeah.
Glenda Pereira: [10:43]
A bit longer than desired because they’re getting milked. But then, wherever they are in their stalls, make sure you have grooved pavement. And if they’re out on pasture, you know, just rotate them and don’t create a soupy, sloppy mess, especially during the wet seasons here in the state of Maine. Keeping a dry environment is really critical for maintaining that maintenance cocktail for hoof health.
Jacki Perkins: [11:11]
And one thing I’ve run into is that sometimes people can’t get up and away from their soupy environments. So, like Glenda said, you rotate them more often so that they’re not doing environmental damage or sitting in slop. But also, if you’ve gotten yourself into a situation because the weather was different this year, one recommendation I got from my mom was to spread pulverized limestone until it looks like there’s been a light dusting of snow, because it adjusts the pH. And if you can adjust that pH to something undesirable for the organisms affecting the hooves to grow in, that can help a lot.
Jacki Perkins: [11:50]
There are also some fun organic alternatives that we can look into. There are natural antibiotics like honey and garlic. For any kind of fungus, you can use tea tree oil, those sorts of things. But those are just some of the more herbal treatments if you find yourself with an animal that is struggling despite your maintenance. One thing I can say about breeding, maintenance, and form and function is that nutrition plays a big, big part in hoof health.
Jacki Perkins: [12:25]
And specifically, when we look at the internal structures, hoof anatomy, form, function, and failure, there are leg bones that then turn into hoof bones, and they have to attach to the outer hoof structure, the nail, through soft tissue. And it’s this very thin layer of soft tissue called lamina. And that lamina is built almost like Velcro, where it kind of knits together. And when we’re talking about nutrition, we want to maximize our production, but we must be careful. Because when we’re feeding protein and energy, that’s upping the metabolism of the animal and essentially turning them into a crock pot.
Jacki Perkins: [13:16]
And what happens in a crock pot to meat on the bone is that, when the heat is high enough for long enough, it will cook the meat off the bone. And so what we run into on our high-protein diets is that we weaken that laminar attachment. And if our external structures aren’t aligned with our internal structures, you can do more harm than good if you don’t understand that connection. Tearing occurs, and things become worse.
Glenda Pereira: [13:45]
Some folks may run into laminitis if they’re feeding a higher-energy diet that’s higher in starch. So just be mindful of that if you’re feeding a lot of it. And almost always, if your cows have acidosis, they might also have laminitis. Yep. Which is why it’s really important for you to just kind of keep tabs on that.
Glenda Pereira: [14:05]
And something we’re gonna talk about is locomotion and lameness scoring. And that’s one of the ways that you can just be mindful of what’s going on. If there is some lameness, score it as much as you can. But, of course, it’s not practical to score them every day or once a week, or whatever fits into your system. But then you can say, maybe there’s another underlying issue.
Glenda Pereira: [14:24]
And then, like you said, sometimes it’s really nutritional. And so, if cows have acidosis, be checking for laminitis as well.
Jacki Perkins: [14:32]
And there’s the weakening of the structure through nutrition, because those same grooved floors can save our animals when it’s slippery. As they slide along and their hooves catch in those grooves, it causes microtears, and then that leads to abscesses. Yep. So, yeah, the locomotion scoring. And I would challenge you to try to locomotion-score your animals every time you see them.
Jacki Perkins: [15:01]
Just as you’re walking along, take note. You don’t have to write it down. Just say, hey. What do I think this cow is today? Hey.
Jacki Perkins: [15:08]
What do I think that goat is today? Locomotion scoring is not just about overt lameness. And there are guides that you can find online. If you’re not Internet savvy, we’ll be happy to mail them to you.
Glenda Pereira: [15:21]
Mhmm.
Jacki Perkins: [15:21]
Penn State puts out a really, really nice one. But if they’re normal, and I’m talking about cows here, then if a cow is walking normally across your concrete, her top line, her entire backbone, is ramrod straight. I have seen herds where there is persistent mild to moderate lameness because the cows are all walking around humped up, and nobody notices because they’re not overtly limping.
Glenda Pereira: [15:46]
Yeah. And the thing, too, is that dairy cows are really good at this because they’re prey animals. I guess sheep and goats are, too, though goats not as much. So they’re gonna try not to limp around you. Right?
Jacki Perkins: [16:00]
Sheep especially. Sheep will be like, “I’m fine. Yeah. Fine.” And then they’re dead.
Glenda Pereira: [16:04]
Yep. So locomotion is one of those hard things because they might not let you see it, but that’s a really good one. I agree. The arch in the back is the first indicator. Yeah.
Glenda Pereira: [16:16]
The…
Jacki Perkins: [16:16]
I think that’s Penn State.
Glenda Pereira: [16:17]
Zinpro, I think, puts that out. The Zinpro locomotion scoring guide that Jacki’s alluding to is for dairy cows, from one to five. Mhmm. There’s just a nice guide, yeah. If there’s an arch in the back, that’s definitely a sign of lameness, and you need to sort of observe and check in more closely about that.
Glenda Pereira: [16:31]
Yeah.
Jacki Perkins: [16:32]
Yeah. And sometimes there’s bias. Yeah, it’s a bias because our infrastructure is outdated. And so we’ve seen it for so long.
Jacki Perkins: [16:40]
We’re like, well, the whole herd’s like that. They’re fine. Right. Well, good. Then the whole herd’s not fine. Right.
Jacki Perkins: [16:45]
Yeah. Which is why I’m such a nerd about it because it matters.
Glenda Pereira: [16:50]
And bring somebody in, too. So Jacki’s happy to come in and talk with your veterinarian. I can come out as well, or somebody on our team, to just check in. Like, what do you think? I don’t know.
Glenda Pereira: [17:01]
I spot lameness from a mile away.
Jacki Perkins: [17:03]
Yeah. Me too.
Glenda Pereira: [17:03]
You just see the animal, like, structurally, they’re not walking like they should. Their gait is different. We’d be happy to touch base with you on lameness scoring in your herd as well.
Jacki Perkins: [17:16]
We haven’t talked about pigs, but one of the most fascinating things I saw a couple of years ago about pigs is that, in order to handle them, if you have a system that lifts them from the sternum, they relax. And so you can trim their hooves if you’ve got breeding stock or if they have a hoof issue. I saw a video of a farm down in North Carolina, I think, that did vaccinations and hoof trimming on their entire adult herd of hogs. And all they did was have this cool little chute system that lifted them up, and they just kind of went sleepy.
Jacki Perkins: [17:52]
Yeah. It was very cool. But they’re two-toed as well. And when we talk about the external structure of anything with two toes, that’s a lot of surface area. That’s a lot of surface area to hide bacteria.
Jacki Perkins: [18:03]
And then they pinch together. And so, if we’re in wet environments, that wet, nasty, anaerobic situation gets pinched in between their toes. Some of the things we see are digital dermatitis, which is the hairy heel warts I talked about and is very contagious, and foot rot or necrosis. Necrosis is gross because they actually lose bone material, and it can be really hard to rehab them after that.
Jacki Perkins: [18:28]
Abscesses. We see abscesses on pasture because they step on a rock. Yep. In my personal life, we do have a Jersey, and she’ll just lie down and pretend she’s dying. I only say that because that one happened to me.
Jacki Perkins: [18:41]
She’s like, I have a stone bruise. I could not get her in the trailer to get her home.
Glenda Pereira: [18:47]
Yeah. And I think I just kind of wanted to say there are two camps for some of the causes of lameness: infectious and structural. We kind of have touched on all of them. Right? So, with the infectious ones, you tend to see foot rot and digital dermatitis, and it tends to be because of the environment.
Glenda Pereira: [19:02]
Right? Soupy, wet, moist. We can’t keep things dry, and then those can also be contagious. But structural ones, like sole ulcers and white line disease, tend to be because of infrastructure, environment, and management, such as nutrition. Right?
Glenda Pereira: [19:20]
So those are two sort of categories that we can put lameness into.
Jacki Perkins: [19:24]
Yeah. And routine hoof trimming. Because, again, if the outside structure is not matching the inside structure, no amount of breeding is gonna get you there.
Glenda Pereira: [19:32]
Speaking of breeding, I think one thing that’s really critical, you know, yes, it affects your bottom line. But when we think about the dairy system, cows that can’t breed, cows that can’t, like, stand on their own, are very unlikely to have a good heat cycle because they can’t stand to mount. So then you’re gonna impact your reproductive success on your farm as well. So lameness ties into all aspects of it, but especially fertility. It can really negatively impact fertility performance.
Jacki Perkins: [20:02]
And it’s just as critical for sheep and goats. And I think they’re probably even more prone to things like foot rot. Yeah. One of the most interesting things I learned, because I’m still learning, I don’t know everything, is that sheep actually have kind of a fun little oil gland in between their toes that occasionally needs to be expressed while you’re doing your routine trimming. Interesting.
Jacki Perkins: [20:22]
Yeah. I
Glenda Pereira: [20:23]
didn’t know that either.
Jacki Perkins: [20:24]
There we go. I just kind of absorbed that one. I went, all right. I will keep an eye on that and let people know in the future. In the most recent small-ruminant hoof-trimming workshop that we did down at Meadowcroft Farm, I was taught to do a very 4-H-y kind of square-toed trim on small ruminants.
Jacki Perkins: [20:44]
Nan Kennedy, the owner of Meadowcroft Farm, learned to trim hooves in New Zealand, and she absolutely will not square off a toe. Her argument is that a squared-off toe can pick up more manure, and I have to say I agree with her. It’s also faster. Nan learned how to trim 10,000 to 15,000 sheep at a time. So we were cruising along, and it’s way faster to trim that thing into a point.
Jacki Perkins: [21:08]
A lot of people get worried about trimming sheep and goats. It’s not as hard as you think it would be. They’re structurally the same as other two-toed critters. Their overgrowth develops slightly differently, and trimming them tends to be super easy for a homesteader or somebody who doesn’t wanna wrestle cows.
Glenda Pereira: [21:26]
Yeah. Sheep and goats, they curl.
Jacki Perkins: [21:28]
The outside hoof wall kinda creates a flap over the bottom of the sole.
Glenda Pereira: [21:33]
And that’s where those fun little organisms can sneak in and kind of hang out, whereas with cows, their toes curl inward.
Jacki Perkins: [21:41]
And it’s like the tip of their toe. And then they’ll end up walking a lot on their heels while their toe curls up. And the cows tend to have a lot going on at the heel because, if they’re overgrown, that ends up…
Glenda Pereira: [21:50]
because they walk. They weigh much more.
Jacki Perkins: [21:52]
They weigh so much more.
Glenda Pereira: [21:54]
Their balance is a little bit different.
Jacki Perkins: [21:55]
It’s all that extra stomach. Yeah. They’ve got those stomach compartments going on. Yeah. But all that is to say, if you have sheep and goats or want sheep and goats, I’m happy to teach you how to trim.
Jacki Perkins: [22:06]
The biggest reason that I don’t do cattle trimming or teach it is because I don’t have a chute. But I think there are schools and people out there who are willing to do it, and you can even do it on your own. The one thing that I have realized through personal experience is that, if you boo-boo and make them bleed in your learning journey, you’re gonna be okay. I’ve had more abscesses happen from improper alignment or not trimming than I have had issues from nicking an animal and having them go lame. I’ve never nicked an animal and had them go lame from the nick.
Glenda Pereira: [22:52]
No. You bring up a great point. I’ve heard this, you know, if your hoof trimmer comes and does 100 animals, it’s very likely three or four of them might look lame in the next couple of days just because they were trimmed. And so it just happens. It’s part of the process, and it’s okay. They’re gonna be okay.
Glenda Pereira: [23:11]
They’re gonna recover. But not doing the trimming is gonna be way worse and more detrimental to your herd than one or two of them getting a little nicked in the process.
Jacki Perkins: [23:22]
Frankly, I push back on the “nicking means they go lame” thing. I think it’s probably more of an angle change. Wow. My tendons are being stretched in a different way. Because they have a major tendon going from the back of their knee all the way down, and it attaches at the bottom of that hoof bone.
Jacki Perkins: [23:38]
Yeah. And so, when all of that soft tissue higher up gets stretched and stressed
Glenda Pereira: [23:45]
It feels different. It feels different. That’s why they’re walking a little bit funny over the next couple of days.
Jacki Perkins: [23:50]
Yeah. And a lot of times we’re navigating over some slightly wet concrete. Yep. Not straight out to pasture. So they’re just learning.
Jacki Perkins: [23:57]
It’s like getting a new pair of shoes.
Glenda Pereira: [23:58]
They’re just
Jacki Perkins: [23:58]
learning how to walk on something different. And so their gait is a bit different. Give them a couple of days to…
Glenda Pereira: [24:04]
To re-
Jacki Perkins: [24:05]
readjust. Because I have stressed about making animals bleed. And even when I was down working with Nan, I was like, “Oh, I made one bleed a little bit, Nan. I’m very sorry.” She goes, “Oh, don’t worry.”
Jacki Perkins: [24:16]
She’ll be fine. And she was. If it is something that you wanna take on yourself with a little bit of guidance, yes. Do the treatments, the antiseptic, maybe give it a wrap, but it’s not the end of the world.
Glenda Pereira: [24:30]
And let it breathe, too.
Jacki Perkins: [24:32]
Let it breathe.
Glenda Pereira: [24:32]
Wrap it. I think part of the maintenance, especially when you’re doing treatment, is…
Jacki Perkins: [24:37]
It’s a wound. All wounds have to breathe at some point.
Glenda Pereira: [24:39]
Yes. So wrap it first, especially if you don’t have a place where they’re gonna be standing in a dry environment full time. Right? Wrap it. Let it heal for one or two days, but let it have oxygen on day two or day three, or whatever.
Glenda Pereira: [24:54]
Because that’s really critical, too. Keeping something wrapped and not exposing it to oxygen means it won’t be able to heal properly.
Jacki Perkins: [25:03]
So…
Glenda Pereira: [25:03]
wrap it, keep it dry as long as you can. And then, once you’ve given it one or two days, she’s good to go. Take it off, and then she kind of heals nicely from there.
Jacki Perkins: [25:14]
I would agree.
Glenda Pereira: [25:15]
Cool. I think… I don’t know. Was there something we missed, or was there a species? I know we didn’t cover poultry.
Jacki Perkins: [25:22]
We didn’t cover poultry. There is an old practice of pulling spurs, and then they’ll regrow, but that is bloody and vicious and not allowed in organic practices. So, if you have roosters that you really wanna keep, you can go through and trim. Occasionally, it’s nice to trim them if they’re getting super long because they can do damage to the hens that they’re then mounting. And the hens typically don’t need to be trimmed unless they’re exhibiting very rooster-y characteristics, and some hens grow spurs.
Jacki Perkins: [25:56]
So just a dog toenail trimmer is gonna do it for you. Equines. The only other equine thing that we could talk about is thrush. And my argument is that horses, donkeys, and mules should not have thrush if their external angles are matched up to their internal angles. Blood goes down their leg just fine, but it doesn’t go up their leg just fine.
Jacki Perkins: [26:23]
So they have to have a little bit of frog contact. The whole hoof structure on an equine is meant to flex, whereas with a two-toed critter, those toes will just splay out away from each other, and they get better traction, which is why we can keep two-toed critters on concrete and we should not keep equines on concrete. But the equine hoof is meant to flex. And as they step on it and it flexes down and out, that frog should touch in order to pump blood back up their leg.
Jacki Perkins: [26:47]
And without good circulation, we get bacterial infections that can’t clear up. So your angles have to match. There are all kinds of arguments that go on, but that’s the specialized equine one. There’s an argument around mules and donkeys having more upright hooves. The frog still has to pump blood the same way.
Jacki Perkins: [27:07]
So, however that works out. Yeah, I’ve run…
Glenda Pereira: [27:11]
into that. Call Jacki if you have questions, because I didn’t know that. And, yeah, that seems like a preventative measure that folks can use.
Jacki Perkins: [27:21]
I do offer it. It’s one of the services that’s not publicized a lot. However long it takes, I’ll come talk you through it for a $100 fee that’s made payable to MOFGA. Because a lot of times it’ll take two or three hours to go through somebody’s herd or flock or, you know, discuss it with someone who has a mule or a donkey. And I say mules or donkeys because a lot of times they don’t trust strangers, and you have to do it yourself. Learning to at least take some off is better than not taking off any and then having people report you when their hooves get super long. But, yeah, it is one of the things that I will come show you how to do repeatedly if necessary, and I consider it a reasonable fee because of the amount of time I will spend, however long it takes.
Jacki Perkins: [28:10]
I will spend as long as you feel like you need help working through it. But, again, I didn’t go to school for it, except at VTC, Vermont Technical College, where we did have a rotation. I am largely self-taught, so I don’t have any credentials behind my name, and I have found that that’s okay. Yep.
Jacki Perkins: [28:33]
And it is completely legal in the state of Maine, for however long that lasts. The other thing I can say is that the horse hoof tools you see can be used for other species. They’re just slower. So, if you’ve got one family cow, you could trim her with a horse rasp. If you’ve got sheep and goats, one of our sheep producers has a specialized sheep rasp for her sheep.
Jacki Perkins: [28:57]
And every time they do FAMACHA scoring, they file their feet. Because of the breed they chose, they wanna do really routine maintenance on those hooves to make sure there’s no space for bacterial introduction. And it’s just slower. When I talk about the grinding wheel for cows, you can use a grinding wheel on horses. I would use a little tiny one if you’re touching up the toes on small ruminants.
Jacki Perkins: [29:20]
But, honestly, boy, you can do that with a pair of shears pretty quickly.
Glenda Pereira: [29:24]
That’s what I’ve seen. Oh, yeah. You see a wheel more commonly on cows, larger animals.
Jacki Perkins: [29:30]
Right. I would say, once they’re habituated to it, they’re okay. Some of the farmers I talk to have an issue with tilt trailers, the ones that will actually rotate the cow down onto their side, because you can’t run pregnant cows through them. They could get a uterine torsion, and that’s a nightmare.
Jacki Perkins: [29:47]
Yep. But more and more, we’re seeing hydraulically run chutes that leave the cow standing. I have a hard time with tilt situations just because I have to reorient my brain. That’s the one thing I can say. I’m lucky enough to be ambidextrous.
Jacki Perkins: [30:05]
So I think three-dimensionally, which means I think all the way around the hoof and how it looks operating in a tilt situation. It just takes me a minute to reorient my brain. I have helped people work through trimming, and I have to take a step back and relearn how their body and their brain might work because they’re not ambidextrous. Think about trying to get your artistic self going. If you’re artistically minded and you like sculpting, maybe you can start a business because there aren’t enough hoof trimmers.
Jacki Perkins: [30:36]
And the chutes are expensive, but I bet you could get a loan. Yep. And there are programs available that might help you. Yeah. So, if you’ve got a lot of critters to do, you kinda weigh how much time you can take to do this task versus, like, how nitpicky you wanna be.
Jacki Perkins: [30:53]
Yep. And I can say that horses wear shoes. Cows also occasionally wear shoes in the form of blocks. If they’ve got a problem on one side, that’s where I’m most jealous when I trim my horses.
Jacki Perkins: [31:07]
And I’m like, oh, but if a cow has a problem on one side of her hoof, I could just block up the good side so that she can heal on the bad side, whereas the horse is just lame. So there’s all kinds of things to do therapeutically to get them through it. And, again, the cheapest way is maintenance.
Glenda Pereira: [31:24]
Prevention. No, those are all good points. And I think I wanted to note, too, that there are some hoof trimmers in the state of Maine. So, obviously, reach out to those folks.
Glenda Pereira: [31:32]
And if they have capacity, yeah, and you can afford it, you know, there are folks out there who do this as a job, and they’re experts in this field. Reach out to Jacki. She’s got a wealth of knowledge. She’ll come out, as she mentioned, to teach you about physiology, anatomy, and how everything kind of connects, and try to do as much routine maintenance care as possible.
Glenda Pereira: [31:54]
But, really, management, nutrition, and all of those aspects tie in, too. So there’s a lot that goes into lameness. Everything’s a system. Right? And we need those things in place so that the animal can walk, get up, lie down, access feed, and feel comfortable overall. And, of course, work with your veterinarian.
Glenda Pereira: [32:12]
It’s always critical to have a plan in place for how you might potentially work with a lame animal, and not every animal that’s lame can have the recovery that we wish it could. So, in those cases, work with your veterinarian on what you might do. But, yeah, these are all really good points that we ran through to give folks some more insight into how they can potentially manage or think about lameness from a different angle. No pun intended.
Jacki Perkins: [32:40]
You’re so funny.
Glenda Pereira: [32:41]
Was there anything else we missed, Jacki? I wanted to offer the opportunity to just kind of circle back in if we missed anything about lameness that you wanted to share with folks.
Jacki Perkins: [32:50]
The one plug I have to put in is that one of the ways I can offer technical assistance for free has recently been through the Transition to Organic Partnership Program. That’s how we paired up with Nan Kennedy of Meadowcroft Farm. And that program has been pairing mentors with mentees to learn about organic practices and what we can do organically for some of these hoof maladies. And it’s been a really great program. So thanks for letting me mention it.
Glenda Pereira: [33:23]
Yeah, of course. No, absolutely. The more resources we can make available to farmers, especially for technical assistance, which is how this grant has been supporting some of these objectives, the better. We always welcome that.
Glenda Pereira: [33:37]
So thanks for mentioning that again. All right. Well, thanks for coming back on the Maine Farmcast, Jacki.
Jacki Perkins: [33:42]
Oh, no problem. Thanks for having me.
Glenda Pereira: [33:45]
Awesome. Well, if folks have topic suggestions, comments, or questions, be sure to email us at extension.farmcast@maine.edu.