A pilot study: tail tip lesions in dairy cows - an unnoticed animal welfare issue?

The welfare of dairy cows is becoming increasingly important. While diseases like mastitis and lameness are common ailments, injuries to the tail tip go largely unnoticed. The study aimed at investigating whether tail tip lesions, which are mostly described in beef cattle, also occurred on n = 5 dairy farms and, if so, what type and frequency? The study consisted of two phases. During the first part of the study tail tips of 78 dairy cows were examined over a period of six months; based on these results, we developed a training card on tail tip lesions in dairy cows, which was used in part two of the study to train further examiners to inspect four more flocks. In total, we collected n = 3587 tail records from n = 513 Holstein and n = 128 Simmental dairy cows. The overall frequency regarding all types of lesions ranged between 84.0 % (± 2.0) and 94.1 % (± 1.8) in Holstein herds and between 97.0 % (± 2.2) and 99.0 % (± 2.2) in Simmental herds. To our knowledge, this is the first investigation of tail tip lesions in German dairy cows. We concluded that tail tip lesions might be a frequent yet unnoticed condition in German dairy cows.