Different animal welfare orientations towards some key research areas of current relevance to pastoral dairy farming in New Zealand

Webster, Jim; Schütz, Karin E.; Sutherland, Mhairi A.; Stewart, Mairi

doi:10.1080/00480169.2014.958117

Cited by 24 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 62 publications

(67 reference statements)

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“…Thus, in order to improve on merely neutralising negative survival-critical affects, and to contribute to the drive to secure “lives worth living”, codes would obviously need to include minimum standards specifically aimed at promoting positive experiences. Examples of such codes already exist [ 8 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 21 , 63 , 64 ], but further improvements are likely to be possible [ 30 , 47 , 54 , 93 ]. It is recommended that all future reviews of codes, no matter how advanced they currently appear to be, should, on a species-specific basis, include explicit and detailed consideration of whether or not the current minimum standards need to be extended to ensure that they do indeed enable animals to have “lives worth living”.…”

Section: Towards a “Life Worth Living”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Updating Animal Welfare Thinking: Moving beyond the “Five Freedoms” towards “A Life Worth Living”

Mellor

2016

Animals

608

555

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Simple SummaryThe Five Freedoms were formulated in the early 1990s and are now well recognised as highly influential in the animal welfare arena. However, a marked increase in scientific understanding over the last two decades now shows that the Five Freedoms do not capture, either in the specifics or the generality of their expression, the breadth and depth of current knowledge of the biological processes that are germane to understanding animal welfare and to guiding its management. For example, this paper refers to some negative experiences that can never be eliminated, merely temporarily neutralised, because they are essential for eliciting behaviours upon which the survival of the animal depends. In addition, it refers to other negative experiences that relate to an animal’s responses to living in poor environments which require improvement, and also to how such experiences may be replaced by positive ones when particular improvements are introduced. For animals to have “lives worth living” it is necessary, overall, to minimise their negative experiences and at the same time to provide the animals with opportunities to have positive experiences. These observations have implications for reviewing and potentially updating minimum standards in codes of welfare. The paper ends with an up-to-date characterisation of the principal features of animal welfare, expressed largely in non-technical terms.AbstractThe Five Freedoms have had major impact on animal welfare thinking internationally. However, despite clear initial statements that the words ‘freedom from’ should indicate ‘as free as possible from’, the Freedoms have come to be represented as absolute or fundamental freedoms, even rights, by some animal advocate and other groups. Moreover, a marked increase in scientific understanding over the last two decades shows that the Freedoms do not capture the more nuanced knowledge of the biological processes that is germane to understanding animal welfare and which is now available to guide its management. For example, the named negative experiences of thirst, hunger, discomfort and pain, and others identified subsequently, including breathlessness, nausea, dizziness, debility, weakness and sickness, can never be eliminated, merely temporarily neutralised. Each one is a genetically embedded element that motivates animals to behave in particular ways to obtain specific life-sustaining resources, avoid or reduce physical harm or facilitate recovery from infection or injury. Their undoubted negativity creates a necessary sense of urgency to respond, without which animals would not survive. Also, the temporary neutralisation of these survival-critical affects does not in and of itself generate positive experience. This questions the commonly held assumption that good animal welfare will result when these internally generated negative affects are minimised. Animals may also experience other negative affects that include anxiety, fear, panic, frustration, anger, helplessness, loneliness, boredom and depression. These situa...

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Section: Towards a “Life Worth Living”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Updating Animal Welfare Thinking: Moving beyond the “Five Freedoms” towards “A Life Worth Living”

Mellor

2016

Animals

608

555

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“…Across humans and animals, the term pain covers an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage ( 84 ). However, quantification of pain in non-verbal individuals is not simple ( 85 ) and must be assessed indirectly.…”

Section: Consequences Of Disbudding For Calf Welfare—effects Of Pain mentioning

confidence: 99%

Welfare Effects of the Use of a Combination of Local Anesthesia and NSAID for Disbudding Analgesia in Dairy Calves—Reviewed Across Different Welfare Concerns

Herskin

Nielsen

2018

Front. Vet. Sci.

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Across the international dairy industry, the vast majority of dairy herds have dehorned cows. Farmers choose to dehorn calves for different reasons such as easier handling of non-horned cattle and reduced risk of injuries in animals and staff. This review focuses on disbudding by use of hot-iron cautery as is practiced by dairy farmers in calves <3 months of age. We examine welfare effects of the use of NSAIDs in combination with a local anesthetic including indicators relevant for the three major welfare concerns—affective states, basic health, and functioning as well as the possibility to behave naturally. Across indicators of animal welfare, the majority of available evidence suggest that the use of NSAIDs in combination with a local anesthetic is advantageous in terms of animal welfare, and no studies suggest that NSAIDs are a disadvantage to animal welfare. However, irrespective of the welfare concern, use of NSAIDs combined with a local anesthetic does not fully eliminate the welfare challenges from disbudding. Further research is needed in order to fully understand the effects of this medication protocol on calf welfare, including knowledge about the duration of healing and the presence of long-term pain. At present, this lack of knowledge challenges the precise formulation of adequate pain management—in terms of medication protocol, duration, dosage, and type of administration.

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“…The increasing herd size and intensification of pasture-based dairy production, such as occurs in Australia and New Zealand, has occurred against a background of a heightened public interest in animal welfare (Fisher and Webster, 2013;von Keyserlingk and Weary, 2017;Weary and von Keyserlingk, 2017). Potential challenges to pasture-based dairy cow welfare that have been identified with increasing herd size include the long distances cows are required to walk to and from the dairy parlor and extended time spent at the dairy waiting to be milked (Clark et al, 2013;Beggs et al, 2015Beggs et al, , 2018Webster et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implications of prolonged milking time on time budgets and lying behavior of cows in large pasture-based dairy herds

Beggs

Hemsworth

Fisher

2018

Journal of Dairy Science

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In large Australian pasture-based dairy herds, it is common for the time taken to milk a herd of cows to be up to 4 h. Cows are collected from the paddock as a group, wait in turn in the dairy yard to be milked, and then return individually to the paddock or feed pad immediately after leaving the milking parlor. In such herds, we previously found a consistent milking order, resulting in some cows being regularly away from pasture for several hours per day more than others. Increased time away from pasture may affect the time budgets of cows because of decreased opportunity for grazing or lying down. Lying behavior is a high-priority behavior for cows, and the duration of lying has been used as an important measure of their welfare. We applied activity monitors for 7 d to 15 cows toward the beginning and 15 cows toward the end of the milking order in 10 dairy herds milking 500 to 730 cows as a single group to understand the effect of extra time spent in the dairy on lying behavior. Study cows typically produced 6,000 to 8,000 L in a 300-d lactation on rotary dairy platforms with 40 to 80 units, being fed 2.5 to 6 kg of grain mix in the milking parlor daily, with the rest of the diet being supplied as pasture or forage provided in the pasture or close to the exit of the dairy. Over the 10 farms, 1,948 cow-days were available for analysis. The furthest paddocks on each farm were 1.8 to 3.5 km walking distance from the dairy. A wide range of steps were taken each day, ranging from 1,705 to 15,075 (mean = 5,916). The main predictor of the number of steps was the farm on which the cows were located. Cows that spent less than an hour waiting to be milked (and would be unlikely to have their ability to lie down affected by the milking process) laid down for a mean of 9.8 h/d. Steps walked and delay in the dairy waiting to be milked were both significantly associated with lying time, but the effect was not large. A regression model accounting for the waiting time at the dairy, steps taken, cow age, and farm was used to investigate the relationship with daily lying time. For every 1,000 steps, lying time reduced by 0.49 h; however, the number of steps explained only 1% of the variation in lying time. For every hour increase in waiting time at the dairy, lying decreased by approximately 14 min, but this explained only 14% of the variation in lying. We concluded that milking time durations of 2 to 4 h, common in large Australian pasture-based dairy herds, did not significantly affect the time budget for lying of individual cows in our study herds. Whereas the effect of long milking times does not appear to be a major risk to animal welfare in terms of lying time, the effect on cow health and production warrants further investigation.

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Different animal welfare orientations towards some key research areas of current relevance to pastoral dairy farming in New Zealand

Cited by 24 publications

References 62 publications

Updating Animal Welfare Thinking: Moving beyond the “Five Freedoms” towards “A Life Worth Living”

Updating Animal Welfare Thinking: Moving beyond the “Five Freedoms” towards “A Life Worth Living”

Welfare Effects of the Use of a Combination of Local Anesthesia and NSAID for Disbudding Analgesia in Dairy Calves—Reviewed Across Different Welfare Concerns

Implications of prolonged milking time on time budgets and lying behavior of cows in large pasture-based dairy herds

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