A small group of individuals are making an immense impact in the dairy industry.
The team of Dr. Jen Walker, Dr. Gerard Cramer and Jamie Sullivan are using their expertise and experience to educate, train and promote the principles of hoof care, and proper functional and therapeutic trimming techniques for improved animal welfare on farms through the Kinder Hoof Care Academy Trimmer Training.
“When it comes to animal welfare on dairies, hoof health is one of those challenges that we all recognize, yet we still can’t seem to get ahead of it,” says Walker, co-founder and chief animal welfare officer at Kinder Ground. “We wanted to bridge this gap. Step one is making sure the on-farm caregivers responsible for hoof care can show up competent and capable.”
Kinder Ground, in partnership with Cramer at the University of Minnesota and Sullivan with Rippleview Hoof Care, addresses this industry dilemma in an intensive three-day academy. The first event took place in June in Minnesota.
“The goal is to talk about the practices and do some hoof trimming,” Sullivan says. “We also want to provide attendees with the knowledge and confidence to open conversations with everyone on the farm team about proper hoof care and risk factors causing lameness.”
Sullivan has been trimming in the Canadian dairy industry for three decades. The lack of improvement in lameness helped persuade Sullivan to get involved with the academy.
“Thirty years ago, the industry average was 30 percent lameness,” he says. “Now, 30 years later, we’re still at 30 percent lameness. We wouldn’t accept our somatic cell count to be what it was 30 years ago, or milk production, but lameness is, ‘Just what lameness is.’”
Cramer agrees.
“Workshops like this bring awareness to that,” he says. “Thirty percent isn’t normal, and we have ways to improve on that.”
The nuts and bolts of the academy
Attendees spend the first day at an educational facility to discuss principles of hoof care – including anatomy of the hoof and tool selection and proper use – and practice functional and therapeutic trimming on cadaver feet. The following two days are on a host farm where cows are run through one of two chutes and each participant has the opportunity to trim.
“It’s not feasible for only a few people to trim the millions of cows that are in North America, right?” Cramer says. “So how do we bring the whole industry up to an appropriate level of ability? It doesn’t have to be my method or my technique, but if we make better decisions for each cow that’s in front of the trimmer, I think that’s useful.”
Other components of the training include appropriate stockmanship and equipment maintenance while on the job. Personal welfare is also brought to attention by discussing the use of safety wear and clothing that benefits the individual.
“With trimming, it's easy to get into autopilot and just go through the motions and get sloppy at times. Our goal is to leave attendees with the steps and safety precautions to fall back on,” Sullivan says. “We’re trying to normalize habits to make sure folks are doing better for the cows but also doing better for themselves. Everyone walking away [from this academy] is not just a better hoof trimmer, but a safer hoof trimmer on many levels.”
Kinder Hoof Care Academy Trimmer Training attendees trim feet at the event's host farm in Minnesota. Photo by Jen Walker.
The academy is also designed to serve as a networking event and one that has a domino effect on the dairies that each of the attendees works with.
For instance, Sullivan recalls conversations during the on-farm trimming days and exchanges that have followed since the event.
“It’s not just training and teaching, but really a mentorship,” he says. “There have been participants who have gone home and reached out about different scenarios they’re coming across, wrapping or not wrapping, proper treatment for dermatitis. They’ve really hit the ground running. It’s impossible to teach everything needed, even in an intense three-day workshop. Creating a mentorship network for follow-up questions and even more training workshops is crucial.”
The academy welcomes individuals of all backgrounds and experiences in hoof health. The inaugural event included practicing veterinarians, veterinarian technicians, hoof trimmers, on-farm consultants and farm employees, with these individuals traveling from within the U.S. and Canada.
A larger goal in mind
The team’s focus is to emphasize animal welfare standards for the industry and challenge what may be the status quo.
“Everyone wants to do their job well, especially those on-farm caregivers who are so eager to learn,” Walker says. “There’s a great sense of pride in what they do and wanting to deliver good care. But I think the reality is for many farm managers or others who have never been taught how to trim, hoof trimming is something like pre-dipping. It’s just a straightforward task, and they don’t understand everything that goes into it. What goes into a proper trim? Are we identifying and treating lesions correctly? Are we recording it and tracking it? It’s a real skill and what we do with that information is key.”
Jamie Sullivan works with an attendee during the first day of the three-day workshop. Attendees practiced therapeutic and functional trimming on cadaver feet. Photo by Jen Walker.
Kinder Ground’s mission is to support the farming community to elevate the welfare of animals in food production. The hoof-trimming academy demonstrated the organization’s mission organically.
“'What should we do about this foot?’ ‘What should we do about that?’ Those were the questions we were talking through,” Sullivan says. “We always brought it back to, ‘What is best for the cow?’ When we do what’s best for the cow, we end up doing what’s best for the farm and make a habit and an impact on welfare.”
Proper hoof trimming is also about working as a team to understand the critical components that go into hoof health on any dairy. The basics and importance of keeping records were emphasized throughout the training.
Cramer shared that they have plans for the academy to develop advanced courses focused on unlocking the potential of detailed records to better understand lameness prevention.
As lameness prevention and treatment are pushed to the forefront of farms’ management strategies, events such as the academy provide the tools, resources and hands-on experience to develop the next generation of competent, capable and compassionate hoof care professionals.
“[Hoof health and lameness] is one of those parts of the industry that we need to create more awareness and a conversation around,” Walker says. “To create change and drive improvement, we need to connect people with the right resources, training and continuing education.”
The next academy is set for Oct. 30 through Nov. 1 in Ohio.
