Mobility Mentors: experiences of delivering First Aid for Feet courses

As it is becoming a more widespread requirement for farmers to demonstrate their capability of hoof care, more vet practices are delivering Lantra-approved First Aid for Feet training for their clients. This must be delivered in conjunction with a suitably qualified trimmer. Here, Andrew Fry, a Mobility Mentor and a fully-audited trimmer member of the Cattle Hoofcare Standards Board, gives his experiences of running the course.

It's always frustrating when you go to a farm to trim and they present you with a lame cow and they say that although she went lame last week, as you were coming this week they thought she could wait for your visit.

Having someone on the farm who is able to identify lame cows and treat them effectively on a daily basis is one of the most valuable things a farm can have and that is why I was so interested to become an instructor on the First Aid for Feet course developed by BCVA and CHCSB. I feel that this has the real potential to improve foot health nationally.

To become an instructor, I had to hold a current RAU level 4 trimming qualification and attend the Train the Trainer course run by Lantra. The latter course has nothing to do with foot trimming but as the name suggests is about teaching methods, communication styles, learning styles and how to plan for the lessons you want to teach.

One of the things that I'm very aware of is that I find it harder to explain to someone how to trim a cow's foot than actually doing it myself, and this course has certainly helped me to find a way to explain myself better. I really enjoyed the training and would recommend it to anyone.

The second part of becoming an instructor was to attend a training day that was run by CHCSB and the BCVA, where vets and trimmers worked together to cover the content and presentation of the course.

In my area I have two local veterinary practices that are keen to run the courses but first we ran a trial course with young vets as our guinea pigs before we rolled it out to the farmers.

Leading up to the first course I met regularly with both vets who were running the course with me. We organised the jobs, like collection of the feet from the abattoir, sourcing of the PPE and consumables like trimming guides, blocks and glue and also discussed who was going to teach which part of the course and prepare the printouts.

As these courses are organised by the vet practices, all the administration is carried out by them. This means that finding candidates, registering them, handling payments and organising all the printouts for the course is not something I have to worry about and that is quite a relief.

Our first course took place towards the end of January 2023 and though it was successful we certainly learned a lot from that first day.

Our biggest problem was that we had collected our feet a week before the course and had frozen them. Due to the bitter cold weather that we were experiencing, even though we left what we thought would be plenty of time, the feet did not thaw out completely before the course began and this made trimming very hard.

A lack of lesions on the feet was another problem we experienced. To overcome this we have taken to creating our own lesions and identifying them with the use of marker spray on the foot.

Something that I came up against on that first course was getting hung up trying to identify whether a cadaver limb was a front foot or a back foot when carrying out the demonstration trim. It confused me and no doubt confused the delegates.

Since then I have always assumed that every foot I pick up is a back foot but I do explain the differences in trimming front feet after the demonstration. Another problem we came across was having too many types of block to use in the practical part of the course.

While it is important to know the differences between the blocks and their advantages and disadvantages, we found that having too many choices was distracting from the correct application of the block. Now, we limit the choice to two types of wooden block and two types of plastic block.

Since that first course in January we have run three more courses for farmers and with each course I have become more confident. We have discovered that having posters on the wall around the trimming area, covering the five step method and blocking techniques, are really useful for the students to refer to during the day.

We have also found that sorting through the feet in the morning before the practical is a good way to prepare ourselves for what we will find in the afternoon when trimming. I have taken some of the healthy and unhealthy feet used in the course and boiled out the pedal bones. These have become really useful when demonstrating how severe lameness can affect a cow permanently.

Overall I have really enjoyed working with both veterinary practices when putting these courses on. I have found that through the process of becoming an instructor and through working closer with the vets I have become more confident about teaching the practical side of foot trimming.

I hope that over the next year or so I will be able to work with more veterinary practices and put on more courses. If every candidate that goes on this course can leave feeling confident about being able to treat a cow’s foot effectively then hopefully they will treat that foot before the cow becomes severely lame.