Relationship between the stockperson's attitudes and dairy productivity in Japan

Abstract

The aim of this study is to identify the factors that comprise farmer attitudes toward dairy cows and jobs in Japan, and examine the relationship between these attitudes and dairy productivity. At first, we executed a questionnaire survey to determine factors that comprise attitudes of farmers toward their jobs and dairy cows, and three factors were extracted. These were named as 'Positive beliefs to cows', 'Negative beliefs to cows' and 'Job satisfaction', respectively. Second, we examined the relationships between attitude and dairy productivity in 35 dairy farms. The positive beliefs scores correlated positively both with milk yield and milk urea nitrogen concentration. We found there to be three farm groups by cluster analysis using three attitude score. The group B farms showed significantly higher positive beliefs scores and job satisfaction scores; on the other hand, the group C farms showed significantly lower positive beliefs scores and higher negative belief scores. The milk yield in group B was significantly higher than that in group C. This study showed that Japanese farmers' attitudes toward cows considerably resemble those seen in previous studies in Western cultures. Positive attitudes toward cows could enhance stockmanship, and could improving animal welfare and productivity.

Association between Attitude and Empathy with the Quality of Human-Livestock Interactions

“…In our study, handlers that generally had positive attitude and empathy scores were associated with a significant decrease in the number of negative tactile interactions, such as prodding and shouting; results that coincided with those reported by other researchers in studies on dairy farms [36,37] and extensive beef cattle systems [8]. Likewise, a study evaluating the attitudes of Japanese workers toward cows found that handlers with high positive attitude scores had a greater tendency to exhibit more positive tactile behavior (e.g., petting), and less to encourage and implement effective methods for improving attitudes, such as providing livestock handlers with new information, creating stimuli, constantly reinforcing the need to treat the animals well [8,38], and promoting actions that increase job satisfaction [39], among others.…”

“…In accordance with a psychological perspective, empathy is referred to as the capacity to understand and share the feelings of others, i.e. conspecific negative tactile behavior (e.g., hitting) when handling their animals [37]. In this respect, we observed that the livestock handlers that had negative beliefs and ideas about animals were more likely to behave negatively with them.…”

Invited review: Examining farmers' personalities and attitudes as possible risk factors for dairy cattle health, welfare, productivity, and farm management: A systematic scoping review

“…Principal components analysis was the most common procedure for condensing attitude items (52%; n = 13), followed by summing single item scores to calculate a final attitude score (16%; n = 4). Other papers used procedures such as factor analysis (Vande Velde et al, 2015;Fukasawa et al, 2017), structural equation measurement models (Toma et al, 2013;Toma et al, 2015), or transforming a 5-point Likert scale into a dichotomous outcome (Kielland et al, 2010).…”

Welfare Problems in Cattle, Pigs, and Sheep that Persist Even Though Scientific Research Clearly Shows How to Prevent Them

“…Research studies clearly show the benefits of good stockmanship. Fearful animals with large flight zones that avoid people are less productive [ 19 , 20 , 21 ]. During the last 10 years, the use of training programs to improve stockmanship has increased.…”