The impact of parity and duration of biotin supplementation on white line disease lameness in dairy cattle

A field study was conducted to examine effects of oral biotin supplementation for up to 18 mo on risks of lameness in dairy cows. The study included a total of 900 cattle from five dairy farms in Gloucestershire, southwest U.K., in a within-herd randomized control trial. The data from this trial were used in this paper to investigate the impact of parity and duration of supplementation with oral biotin at 20 mg/d on white line disease (WLD) lameness. Analysis of the data indicated that WLD increased with increasing parity independent of biotin supplementation from approximately two cases per 100 cow years in primiparous cows to 15.5 cases per 100 cow years in all multiparous cows, but up to 47.7 cases per 100 cow years for cows in parities ≥ 5. Supplementation with biotin reduced WLD lameness by 45% in multiparous cows down to 8.5 cases per 100 cow years, whereas the effect of biotin supplementation in primiparous cows was not significant. Although numerical reductions in WLD lameness were observed for shorter periods of supplementation, a supplementation length of at least 6 mo was required to significantly reduce the risk of WLD lameness in multiparous cows. The effect of biotin supplementation in reducing lameness has potential impact for both animal welfare and farm economics.