Methods for the diagnosis and treatment of hoof diseases

At present, the import of heifers from abroad is widely practised in Kazakhstan to increase milk production. The main aim of these imports is not only to improve the quality of the breeding stock, but also to radically increase the productivity of the commercial dairy herd as a whole - which is already adapted to existing feeding and housing conditions - within the shortest possible time. However, whilst these animals are more productive, they are less resilient and adapt poorly to our feeding and housing conditions, which are unfavourable even for local breeds. The consequence of this adaptive imbalance-where the impact of certain environmental factors increases whilst the animal's resistance to them decreases-is widespread disease among livestock, a significant proportion of which are surgical conditions. Diseases of the distal limbs, including hooves and claws in farm animals, have recently become the most pressing problem in livestock farming, as they cause significant economic damage to farms due to the culling of large numbers of affected animals (between 30 and 50 per cent), and these conditions are most frequently recorded in the highest-yielding animals.