Assessment of the welfare of dairy caftle using animal‐based measurements: direct observations and investigation of farm records

Whay, HR; Main, David C J; Green, Laura; Webster, A. J. F.

doi:10.1136/vr.153.7.197

Cited by 405 publications

(359 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The dirtiness of the three body regions demonstrated in this study is mainly caused by disregarding of the recommendations for daily cleaning and bedding change in the barns, but also by the improper stall length. For dairy cows, lameness represents a severe welfare problem decreasing mobility and impairing normal behaviour (Whay et al, 2003). The lameness prevalence in our study was higher in loose housing than in the tie-stalls, but the difference was not statistically significant (P>0.05).…”

Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 71%

The Effect of the Housing System on the Welfare Quality of Dairy Cows

Popescu

Borda

Diugan

et al. 2014

Italian Journal of Animal Science

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The aim of this study was to assess the effect of the housing systems (loose vs tiestall) on the welfare of dairy cows and to test the hypothesis that dairy cows in loose housing systems have a better welfare quality than those kept in tie-stalls. Sixty commercial dairy farms (30 with loose and 30 with tie-stall housing system) were selected for evaluation, using mainly animal-based measures, as the applied Welfare Quality ® protocol allows it. A total number of 2624 milking cows were assessed in the winter period. There were significant differences between the two housing systems for the majority of the parameters within the four welfare principles. Significant differences were also found in terms of the mean scores of the welfare criteria and principles, with the majority pointing out the loose system as better. Based on the scores of the four principles, most of the farms with loose housing were classified as enhanced, while the majority of the tie-stall farms were acceptable. The results show that the welfare quality of dairy cows is greatly influenced by the housing system, and that the loose system is more advantageous when it comes to the feeding, housing and behaviour of the dairy cow.

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Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 71%

The Effect of the Housing System on the Welfare Quality of Dairy Cows

Popescu

Borda

Diugan

et al. 2014

Italian Journal of Animal Science

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“…This reflects the greater effort in farmer recording since the study of Kadarmideen et al (2000), which was also based on UK farmer-recorded data, with mastitis and lameness incidences of 6% and 4%, respectively, across five lactations. Higher incidence rates have been reported in UK literature on mastitis (38.2%) and lameness incidence (23.3%) (Whitaker et al, 2004) and it is commonly reported that incidences based on farmer-recorded health events are lower than veterinary recorded events (Whay et al, 2003). Lameness is less recorded than mastitis, which is reflected by the current dataset.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 47%

Genetic parameters for production, health, fertility and longevity traits in dairy cows

Pritchard

Coffey

Mrode

et al. 2013

Animal

138

108

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Milk production, fertility, longevity and health records, were extracted from databases of two milk recording organisations in the United Kingdom for the first three lactations of the Holstein-Friesian breed. These included data related to health events (mastitis and lameness), voluntarily recorded on a proportion of farms. The data were analysed to calculate disease incidence levels and to estimate genetic parameters for health traits and their relationships with production and other functional traits. The resulting dataset consisted of 124 793 lactations from 75 137 animals of 1586 sires, recorded in 2434 herds. Incidence of health events increased with parity. The overall incidence of mastitis (MAS) and lameness (LAM), defined as binary traits, were 17% and 16%, respectively. Heritability estimates for MAS and LAM were 0.04 and 0.02, respectively, obtained from repeatability linear sire models. Heritability estimates of mastitis and lameness as count traits were slightly higher, 0.05 and 0.03, respectively. Genetic correlations were obtained by bivariate analyses of all pair-wise combinations between milk 305-day yield (MY), protein 305-day yield (PY), fat 305-day yield (FY), lactation average log e transformed lactation average somatic cell count (SCS), calving interval (CI), days to first service (DFS), non-return at 56 days (NR56), number of inseminations (NINS), mastitis (MAS), number of mastitis episodes (NMAS), lameness (LAM), number of lameness episodes (NLAM) and lifespan score (LS). As expected, MAS was correlated most strongly with SCS (0.69), which supports the use of SCS as an indicator trait for mastitis. Genetic correlations between MAS and yield and fertility traits were of similar magnitude ranging from 0.27 to 0.33. Genetic correlations between MAS with LAM and LS were 0.38 and 20.59, respectively. Not all genetic correlations between LAM and other traits were significant because of fewer numbers of lameness records. LAM had significant genetic correlations with MY (0.38), PY (0.28), CI (0.35), NINS (0.38) and LS (20.53). The heritability estimates of mastitis and lameness were low; therefore, genetic gain through direct selection alone would be slow, yet still positive and cumulative. Direct selection against mastitis and lameness as additional traits should reduce incidence of both diseases, and simultaneously improve fertility and longevity. However, both health traits had antagonistic relationships with production traits, thus genetic gain in production would be slower.

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“…In addition, science cannot tell us what is socially acceptable or not -and so threshold values are usually set according to expert opinion (e.g. disease prevalence values above which welfare is considered to be poor and where remedial measures are required at herd level can be set from veterinary advice) (Whay et al, 2003a). Finally, ethical, economical and political issues may also come into play (Commission for the European Communities, 2002).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aggregation of measures to produce an overall assessment of animal welfare. Part 2: analysis of constraints

Botreau

Bracke

Perny

et al. 2007

Animal

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The overall assessment of animal welfare is a multicriterion evaluation problem that needs a constructive strategy to compound information produced by many measures. The construction depends on specific features such as the concept of welfare, the measures used and the way data are collected. Welfare is multidimensional and one dimension probably cannot fully compensate for another one (e.g. good health cannot fully compensate for behavioural deprivation). Welfare measures may vary in precision, relevance and their relative contribution to an overall welfare assessment. The data collected are often expressed on ordinal scales, which limits the use of weighted sums to aggregate them. A sequential aggregation is proposed in the Welfare Quality R project, first from measures to welfare criteria (corresponding to dimensions with pre-set objectives) and then to an overall welfare assessment, using rules determined at each level depending on the nature and number of variables to be considered and the level of compensation to be permitted. Scientific evidence and expert opinion are used to refine the model, and stakeholders' approval of general principles is sought. This approach could potentially be extended to other problems in agriculture such as the overall assessment of the sustainability of production systems.

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Assessment of the welfare of dairy caftle using animal‐based measurements: direct observations and investigation of farm records

Cited by 405 publications

References 15 publications

The Effect of the Housing System on the Welfare Quality of Dairy Cows

The Effect of the Housing System on the Welfare Quality of Dairy Cows

Genetic parameters for production, health, fertility and longevity traits in dairy cows

Aggregation of measures to produce an overall assessment of animal welfare. Part 2: analysis of constraints

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