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Committed to animal welfare and with the vision of improving the performance of Albania’s dairy operations, GOPA AFC started a training programme to get hoof trimmers established that serve the country’s cow farms. The training was made possible by the GIZ project Sustainable Rural Development Albania funded by the German and the Swiss governments. The project, in which AFC implements all activities to support dairy farms, pilots and upscales agricultural innovations that make farming more profitable and attractive.
Have you ever entered a cow stable with the purpose of assessing the number of animals which have pain? In many Albanian stables, hoof infections are the primary cause for pain, making cows move and feed less. Their milk yield reduces drastically, their fertility deteriorates, and investments into animals, stables and machinery do not pay off. GOPA AFC’s dairy value chain analysis of 2023 for Albania (“How to overcome the problem of milk scarcity and low profits for dairy farmers and processors?”) found no signs of hoof care in 80% of the visited farms and very little experience among veterinarians in hoof trimming. In all Albania, only two people are offering professional prophylactic hoof trimming services.
We visited one of them, Tomi Kaja, and together with Ties Ruigrok, a teacher at Warmonderhof, one of the finest examples of training farms in the Netherlands, we agreed to run hoof trimming training in the three Albanian dairy clusters: Fier, Korca and Shkodra. The agricultural professional schools in Fier, Korca and Shkodra hosted us and the Chamber of Veterinarians (“Veterinarian Order”) became the patron of the training. More than 60 participants started the training: Veterinarians, dairy farmers and students, 9 of them women.
However, the aim was not to provide general knowledge for a wide range of participants, but to transfer skills for specialised service providers who, with the right experience and equipment, will be able to treat more than 5 cows per hour. Only with such performance, unit costs can be kept low and attractive prices can be offered to dairy farmers for regular hoof trimming of entire cow herds best twice a year. The training therefore contained a lot of practical work on dead and living hoofs as well as several competency tests which after 5 training days between March and May 2024 filtered out 10 skilful and motivated potential hoof trimmers.
GOPA AFC Consultant Ties Ruigrok who has trimmed more than 80,000 cows conducted the training together with Tomi Kaja, as well as AFC colleagues Artan Xhafa and Arjola Cifliku. With the help of small video clips, cows walking with pain were identified. The anatomy of cow hoofs was examined, and major hoof abnormalities and infections were studied. In a first step, all participants got the chance to extensively trim dead hoofs from the slaughterhouse with the knife and the electric disk. Protective gear was obligatory. Those who showed competence were assisted to work on the living cows of the school farms. In a second step, three full training days were spent on commercial farms each with 100 cows and more where the participants practiced their knowledge and skills working under guidance in small groups each with a hoof trimming stand. In these farms, we found that about 70% of cows had serious hoof problems like mortellaro, sole ulcers and lesions.
In addition, there were sessions about starting a hoof trimming business, logistics to keep the costs down as well as financing of necessary investments. The challenge now is to stimulate Albanian dairy farmers to regularly contract hoof trimmers for preventive hoof care so that such services become a viable business – just as in all other European countries. However, to get there, more practical training, peer learning and experience exchange will still be necessary throughout the next months. What’s also necessary is to improve the understanding among farmers and veterinarians of cow signals and the impact of feeding, stable design and bedding on hoof health.