Cow lameness guru Neil Chesterton recently returned from taking seminars on the subject in Chile and Argentina.

The Inglewood vet, who is up for a major award next month, has been studying cow lameness since the early 1980s and is a leading expert in the field internationally.

In June, the NZ Veterinary Association plans to hand him its Impact Award, given to those making a significant contribution to the profession.

Mr Chesterton and wife Sandra have visited 25 countries to speak on cow lameness.

His primary interest is pasture-fed dairy herds but principles he teaches apply to the Northern Hemisphere’s indoor operations as well.

Mr Chesterton graduated from Sydney University (Australia) in 1974, married Sandra and joined a vet practice in Inglewood, where the couple have lived mainly ever since.

Their only time away was three years doing UN aid-work in Pakistan during the 1990s, and another three working for a Christian NGO in Afghanistan in the early 2000s.

Mr Chesterton then became famous for reporting hidden depths in cow behaviour.

“Cows have a pecking order, and we should work with it. They organise themselves into one order coming to the dairy shed and another in which to be milked.

“When farmers pressurise them without allowing for this, it can result in distressed animals skidding their feet across the concrete in the yard. This is how hooves can get damaged, leading to lameness.”

Lameness is a problem which should be eliminated rather than tolerated, Mr Chesterton said.

“The cost of treating it with antibiotics is obvious. But no farmer likes seeing lame cows; they put them in a separate mob. Then when they stop milking the main herd, they must get those ones in as well. It’s a rotten thing to have lots of lame cows on a farm.

“Many farmers assume that if you have cows, you’re going to have lame ones, and they just don’t do anything about it.

“But I go to farms with big herds, where having done things right they have hardly any lame cows at all.”

Mr Chesterton’s assessments cover the distance cows must walk each day; materials used on races and how close farm workers follow behind the herd on their bikes (at least 10 metres is recommended). But even with these attended to, damage can be done outside the dairy shed.

“Overseas, much of the blame is placed on bad nutrition but if there is foot damage and we can find where it’s being caused, we can reduce it.

“There’s much less lameness where people are patient and don’t put undue pressure on their cows.”

Early on, Mr Chesterton observed all aspects of milking on 60 Taranaki farms.

“They got used to me spying on them. I learned much from just watching them, especially what one farmer would call normal while his neighbour did not call it normal at all. I wanted to understand the order they walked in; wanted to see who the front cows were, the middle ones and the back ones.”

He would position himself at the exit from the cowshed and write down cow numbers as they went past.

“By doing this I found the order in which they came to the cow shed was different from the order they came out of it. They had a walking-in order and then a milking order.

“You’ll see some cows rushing to get into the shed yet there’s five-to-six cows waiting off to the side in no hurry at all. When it’s their turn – they go. But if a cow gets out of order it may get beaten-up by a more dominant cow. It’s fascinating.

“Too much pressure in the yard stuffs up the order because they are trying to change from a back-cow to a middle-cow or a front-cow and the time provided is just too tight to do so. This is when damage gets done (to hooves).

Why then do cows prefer to walk to the shed in one order and then to be milked in another?

Mr Chesterton doesn’t pretend to know the answer.

“It’s clear there are still mysteries to unravel in the animal world.”

He said if disturbed or if new cows came in, the herd probably needed a few weeks to re-organise their pecking order.

“We went to look at a herd in the South Island which had huge lameness problems. It had 2500 cows in two herds.

“Cows looked great coming from the paddock all chewing their cud – spread out and happy. They used an automatic gate opener; nobody followed the herd because they didn’t want them to get lame. But guess what -– they still had lame cows – though they shouldn’t have.

“But then in the yard every cow’s head was up. Cows never normally have their heads up – they always have them down to see where to put their feet.

“The farm workers were doing things right on the track but when it came to the shed, they were forcing cows onto the rotary.

“Not wanting a single bail empty was causing lameness. Cows were getting frightened, skidding their feet in the yard.

“I had to train their manager to let the cows come in voluntarily. He said, ‘oh we’ll have empty bails’. I said ‘well, it doesn’t matter. Milking may take 10 minutes more but look at the lame cows you have here. They are costing you money’.

“Farmers need to let cows be cows. If they stuff up the order, the cows will have to work it out again. That takes a little time but if they are patient, it will come right. Initially, they’ll have empty bails but in a couple of weeks the herd will adjust.”

Meanwhile, cows have an uncanny ability to recognise the staff who work with them.

“They can tell staff apart – if you are going to change staff they must win the confidence of the animals. They should speak kindly to the animals, of course. If there’s a new person in your team, he or she must do things the same way as the rest. Otherwise, the cows will be upset and won’t want to come in.

“Maybe you have people with good ideas from their last farm but at this farm they won’t work. Don’t do things as on the last farm. Cows are creatures of habit, they prefer predictability.

“Don’t run – we always walk slowly and no whacking the pipework like, ‘bang, bang, bang’, to make them get up.

“A happy cowshed will be more efficient. If treated kindly and with respect the cows will let their milk down and everything will flow smoothly.”

In recent years Mr Chesterton has focused on the importance of herd management on both farm tracks and in the milking shed, providing practical ways farmers can reduce foot damage and subsequent lameness.