I was thinking about getting a pedicure the other day and decided not to spend the money on it.
Later, I found these pictures and thought I’d share some random bovine pedicure information.
Last year, 1250 girls had their toe nails trimmed at a cost of $17,641.00. Why do we trim their toe nails? Cattle need to be healthy in all respects. It’s important that they are able to walk naturally to the feed bunk, water trough and milking parlor. When a cow has issues with her feet it affects a lot of things including our bottom line. Cattle can have hairy heel warts (see blog from Nov. 28) sole ulcers or perhaps an embedded stone that would be tended to during the scheduled trimming.
When we remodeled our facility a few years ago we included a tilt table. The cattle walk into a chute and are locked in. Straps are then brought up under their belly and the chute tilts 90 degrees and becomes a table. The cattle are lying on their sides while the hoof trimmer trims their hooves. He uses sanders, nippers and knives. For the most part it is a painless procedure, but can be a tricky one. We have a professional do the job.
So, while we ladies sit in comfy massage chairs while being pedicured, our girls are lying down on the job. The one thing the girls are missing is polish. Hmmm, perhaps that’s an idea for a future product.
