Hoof health management as a tool to improve the sustainability of a Holstein-Friesian dairy farm

These datasets originate from a longitudinal before–after intervention study conducted in a commercial Holstein‑Friesian dairy farm (≈320 milking cows) located in the Parmigiano Reggiano Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) production area in northern Italy.The primary objective of the study was to evaluate the impact of a new hoof health management protocol on lesion prevalence, herd milk yield, and farm‐level environmental performance over a four‑year period (baseline Year 0 and three intervention years, Year 1–3). Two complementary datasets are provided: a cow‑level hoof inspection dataset integrating clinical and short‑term milk yield records, and a herd‑level productivity dataset reporting daily milk output and average yield per cow. The hoof health dataset contains 3,024 hoof inspections performed on 763 unique Holstein‑Friesian cows over 156 weeks, covering both the baseline year and the three intervention years. For each inspection, the file includes year of monitoring, cow identification number, farm management group (lactation stage group), inspection date, clinical outcome and individual milk yield. The herd productivity dataset compiles daily herd‑level production data for the same farm over multiple years, covering the baseline (Year 0) and the intervention period (Year 1–3 and subsequent monitoring).For each calendar day, the following variables are reported: date, year, total herd milk production (kg/day), number of milking cows, and average daily milk yield per cow (kg/cow per day). From these datasets, a series of key performance indicators (KPIs) can be derived to explore the association between hoof health and productivity. Examples include lesion prevalence by year and severity class (healthy, mild, severe), lesion‑category milk yield differences over the years, annual distributions of lesions, daily average herd milk yield, and changes in total milk production across experimental years. In the original analysis, these indicators were linked with a life cycle assessment (performed with Agrecalc Cloud) to estimate changes in greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of fat‑ and protein‑corrected milk (FPCM) associated with improvements in hoof health and milk yield in the yers of analysis.