Lameness in housed goats

Lameness in farmed ruminants is a significant economic and welfare problem: lameness is painful and lame ruminants grow more slowly, produce less milk and become pregnant less easily than their non-lame counterparts (Huxley, 2013; Marcone et al, 2022; Vouraki et al, 2022). Yet lameness is significantly under-studied compared to reproduction and mastitis in cattle, sheep and goats. In addition, goats are significantly under researched across all health areas compared to cattle and sheep, probably because keeping goats is common in resource-poor areas and, even in those areas, they are associated with poverty, while cattle are associated with wealth (Peacock, 2005). Lameness in goats is a major welfare and economic problem for which research is very limited.

In higher income countries, most commercially managed goats are dairy goats and most large-scale high-producing dairy goat farms keep their goats indoors with limited access to pasture (Zobel et al, 2019). This is principally to allow supplementary feeding to maintain high milk yields and to limit the impact of gastrointestinal nematodes (Anzuino et al, 2010). In such systems, goats are usually kept loose housed on soft bedding (such as wood shavings or straw) often with limited access to hard surfaces (Zobel et al, 2019). However, when goats are kept in such environments hoof overgrowth is a constant management issue, as goat hooves continue to grow despite the lack of wear. Therefore, corrective hoof trimming to remove excess horn growth is a common husbandry practice on most large-scale goat farms, and most farms trim goats' hooves every 3–6 months (Hempstead et al, 2021). Despite this frequent trimming, hoof overgrowth remains a significant problem on many farms (Hempstead et al, 2021), which is exacerbated by the lack of data on optimal trimming regimes for housed goats.