DIGITAL DERMATITIS
UNDERSTAND THE STAGES TO PREVENT RISING COSTS
As a relatively new disease, the vet understanding of digital dermatitis (DD) is still progressing and a full understanding of the epidiomology of the disease evades the best scientists, as Tommy Armstrong of Provita reports
R
ecent research has helped further our understanding of this complex and costly disease. DairyCo estimates that the average level of lameness in the UK is 25% and, based on DEFRA figures from 2008 this is costing about £100 a cow when all direct and knock on costs are included. This means lameness is costing UK dairy farmers about £170m a year.
As many dairy farmers will realise DD is one of the main causes of lameness in dairy cattle and recent reports have shown that it can be involved in 30% to 50% of lameness cases.
The most widely suspected cause of DD are bacterial agents from the spirochetes family of the Treponema spp. closely related to Treponema phagedaenis, T. vincentii/T. medium, and T. denticola. However, how the disease transmits from one cow to another is not fully understood.
Digital Dermatitis M system
As in many diseases DD has a number of stages, the most widely used and accepted explanation of the different stages of DD is the DD M System.
The M-system represents the varying stages during the course of DD. Here, the ‘M’ stands for ‘Mortellaro’ who identified DD in the first place.
The five M-stages are defined as: M0 - normal digital skin without signs of DD.
106 THE JOURNAL DECEMBER 2014
LEFT Tommy Armstrong, Northern Ireland sales manager for Provita.
M1 - early, small circumscribed red to grey epithelial defect of less than 2cm in diameter that precedes the acute stages of DD. M2 - acute, active ulcerative (bright red) or granulomatous (red-grey) digital skin alteration, more than 2cm in diameter, commonly found along the coronary band in addition to and around the dew claws, in wall cracks and occasionally as a sole defect. M3 - healing stage within one to two days after topical therapy, where the acute DD lesion has covered itself with a firm scab- like material. M4 - late chronic lesions that may be dyskeratotic (mostly thickened epithelium) or proliferative or both. The proliferations may be filamentous, scab-like or mass proliferations. M4.1 - the additional stage refers to the
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