Additives and footbaths to help combat lameness

TendaHealth contains garlic and yeast to increase absorption of essential trace elements and vitamins to address lameness issues and encourage stock to finish sooner. The yeast stimulates rumen bacteria production and stops rumen pH becoming too acidic, while the garlic extract stimulates the role of red blood cell production and antioxidants.

TendaHoof FX has 700g sachets to mix into feed daily, and a solution to use both in footbaths and through a hand applicator. The feed additives is a combination of live yeast and zinc amino acid chelate, which stimulate milk yield and improve udder health and key foot lesion disorders.

In his enthusiastic but confused recent apology for industrial agriculture -- which I discussed here -- the U.K. food writer Jay Rayner observes that "Unhappy, ill animals do not produce milk, so it's not in the factory-scale||| farm's interests to mistreat them or shorten their lifespan." Unfortunately, he's wrong about that. Jacked up with hormones, antibiotics, and feed additives, abused animals can be compelled to produce at high levels. Jack DeCoster's infamous hen houses are notorious for wretched conditions, yet they produce more eggs than any other magnate's flock. And now the U.K.-based Ecologist Magazine has managed to finagle its way into a vast California dairy operation, aided by "disgruntled dairy employees." Sample from the exposé:

It is a continual daily cycle that stops only when the milk output begins to tail off, and the animals are either re-impregnated or sent off to slaughter; burnt out and discarded after only a few years of life on the factory floor. Animals in American mega dairies will never see a patch of grass in their life, and the only respite comes from shade in the dusty open-air lots where they wait between milking. Even here the animals will not get a chance to really rest; high-milk yielding cows suffer from chronic 'negative energy balance', where the cow uses more energy in making milk that she can physically take in by eating, losing body condition as a result.