Effect of Grazing on the Welfare of Dairy Cows Raised Under Different Housing Conditions in Compost Barns.

There is currently no established information for assessing the general welfare conditions and behavior of dairy cows housed in compost-bedded pack barns (CBPs) that allow access to pasture. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate and classify the welfare and behavior of dairy cows in three different housing conditions within CBPs in southern Brazil. During both the cold and hot seasons, nine farms were divided into three groups: CONV (conventional, large, full-time barns), ADAP (conventionally adapted, full-time barns), and PART (part-time barns).

Thermoregulation and Performance of Dairy Cows Subjected to Different Evaporative Cooling Regimens, with or without Pepper Extract Supplementation.

The objective of this study was to evaluate whether there is an interaction between pepper extract (PE) supplementation and evaporative cooling regimens on the performance, thermal comfort, and metabolism of lactating cows. The experiment was designed as a double 4 × 4 Latin square using eight multiparous Holstein cows (days in milk 147 ± 43.8 days).

Compost Barns: A Bibliometric Analysis.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the main scientific studies addressing the topic of compost barns in recent years, highlighting the main journals, authors, countries, organizations, and keywords associated with the publications and trends in this type of research through a bibliometric analysis. For this analysis, publications (articles and literature reviews) addressing compost barns were obtained from the Scopus and Web of Science databases. A total of 108 studies published between 2007 and April 2022 were included.

The Welfare of Dairy Cows in Pasture, Free Stall, and Compost Barn Management Systems in a Brazilian Subtropical Region.

The effect of milk production systems on the welfare of dairy cows has been studied worldwide, but studies that compare pasture-based, compost barn, and free stall systems, according to animal welfare, are more scarce. In this work, the welfare of 51 dairy herds, including 17 from each management system, was investigated through the application of the Welfare Quality protocol. Descriptive statistics and the Kruskal-Wallis non-parametric method were used to analyze variables.