A New, Practical Animal Welfare Assessment for Dairy Farmers.

Animals (Basel)

Department of Population Health Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, 3584 CL Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Published: March 2021

AI Article Synopsis

  • The Welfare Quality assessment protocol (WQ) is a comprehensive method for evaluating animal welfare on dairy farms.
  • This study explored whether quicker, resource-based welfare indicators could substitute for the more labor-intensive animal-based WQ measurements.
  • An alternative protocol, the new Welfare Monitor, was developed, showing significant improvements in cow welfare on farms after farmers received assessments and advice over two years.

Article Abstract

The Welfare Quality assessment protocol (WQ) is the most extensive way to measure animal welfare. This study was set up to determine if resource-based welfare indicators, that are easier and faster to measure, could replace the more time consuming, animal-based measurements of the WQ. The WQ was applied on 60 dairy farms in the Netherlands, with good, moderate and poor welfare. The WQ protocol classified most farms (87%) as 'acceptable'. Several of the animal-based measures of WQ correlated well with measures in the environment. Using these correlations, an alternative welfare assessment protocol (new Welfare Monitor) was designed, which takes approximately 1.5 h for a farm with 100 dairy cows. Because the opinion of farmers about welfare assessment is important if one wants to improve conditions for the cows at a farm, another objective of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of the new Welfare Monitor for the farmer. Over two years, the farms were visited, and advice was given to improve the conditions at the farm. After the first welfare assessment and advice, farmers improved the conditions for their cows substantially. Farms where the category score had increased made more improvements on average than those that did not upgrade.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8003747PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani11030881DOI Listing

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