Lameness ranks among the three most costly health problems in dairy farming. A lame cow eats less, milks less, gets in calf later, and swallows hours of labour to treat. Multiply that across a mob in a wet spring, and it becomes one of the bigger drains on a season.
So before you spend on matting, it's fair to ask whether rubber actually changes those numbers or just hands cows a softer floor. Research and farmer experience point the same way: it cuts the conditions that cause lameness, as long as it goes where cows meet concrete most.
In New Zealand's pasture-based system, most lameness is non-infectious claw-horn disease: white line lesions, sole bruising, and stones lodging in the hoof. Hard ground sits behind nearly all of it.
New Zealand research that locomotion-scored cows across 119 farms keeps flagging the same risk factors:
Concrete is the surface doing the damage. It's abrasive, traps stones, and gives cows nothing underfoot during the long stretches they stand on it before and after milking.
Swedish research comparing floor types found that yielding rubber mats improved locomotion in both lame and non-lame cows, whatever their breed or number of lactations. On smooth wet concrete, a cow takes short, careful steps to avoid going over; on rubber she has enough grip to walk out at a normal pace with her weight properly loaded, which is how a sound cow should move.
Claw health follows the same pattern. Rubber surfaces reduce wear and trauma against concrete, so fewer cows end up with the thin, bruised soles that turn into lameness. Heifers kept on rubber alleys after calving developed fewer claw lesions than those on concrete, which matters, because freshly calved cows are the most vulnerable animals in the herd. On a pasture farm, most of that wear happens on the yard and the tracks rather than out in the paddock, which is exactly where matting goes.
Rubber isn't a cure-all, though. Some housed-barn trials in Europe showed smaller effects, and matting won't fix rough handling, packed yards or neglected tracks. It works best where cows stand on concrete the longest.
The farmers running EasyMat systems describe the same effects the research predicts.
Irene Phillips points straight at the stones problem: "The cows are no longer standing in concrete with stones in their feet, the little ripples (or grooves) in the EasyMat are actually helping stones to come out of their feet."
Andrew Allen, who stands cows off to protect his pastures, used to pay for it every wet season: "Before the matting went in we always had some lame cows... As soon as it gets wet, your cell count goes up, and you get lame cows, but this year it's been bliss with the mats."
Grip comes up again and again. Garth Pickford is blunt about it: "I've had no cows slip over since the EasyMat has gone in now, love it. Would definitely recommend it to any dairy farmer."
And Henry Hendricks saw a change around calving. Cows that once held on until they reached the paddock are "now happy to calve down on the rubber matting, with mothers and calves quickly up onto their feet."
The research and the farmers agree on one thing – put rubber where cows meet concrete most. That usually means:
Grippier, softer footing in these spots cuts the slipping, bruising and standing damage concrete causes.
Matting won't carry the whole load on its own. Good tracks, unhurried cow flow and calm stockmanship count for just as much. But of the risk factors you can actually change, the surface your cows stand and walk on is the most direct, and often the easiest to fix.
Where matting pays off depends on where your cows spend the most time on concrete, and that varies from shed to shed. Get a free measure and quote to work out what would suit yours.