On farm welfare assessment of European fattening lambs

The concept of positive welfare is an expansion of the traditional understanding that animal welfare is defined by minimizing stress, pain, suffering, and disease. Positive welfare shifts the animal welfare narrative from a focus on reducing negative experiences to proactively providing animals with opportunities to have positive experiences and feelings. The concept, although around for several decades, is in its infancy in terms of developing ways of assessing positive welfare on farms, especially in extensive systems, and there are challenges in the adoption of positive welfare practices and the monitoring of continuous improvement at the farm level. Using an iterative approach, this critical review aims to explore the extent to which positive welfare interventions and indicators are positioned and have been developed within the animal welfare literature for sheep. This paper critiques existing positive welfare indicators, such as choices in food and the physical environment, conspecific social synchronization, maternal bonds, intergenerational knowledge transfer, positive human–animal relationships, etc., as currently assessed by the ‘good life framework’. It also reviews the characteristics of scientific measures for (positive) affective states in the current sheep literature and their potential contribution to understanding positive welfare states in sheep. In conclusion, this paper provides recommendations for future research regarding sheep welfare.

Section: Results and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Positive Aspects of Welfare in Sheep: Current Debates and Future Opportunities

Muhammad

Stokes

Manning

2022

“…First, the welfare of animals kept, permanently or temporarily, in these systems must be scientifically and transparently studied [ 6 , 23 ]. Multiple approaches have been used to assess sheep and goat welfare in intensive systems [ 24 ], but ways for adapting and integrating this knowledge into protocols for small ruminants in extensive systems is still open to discussion.…”

Section: Sheep and Goat Extensive Production Systems: The Importance ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some proposals have been made to adapt existing protocols to less intensive farming systems [ 13 , 27 , 35 , 36 , 37 ] although this should be regarded as a complex and challenging task considering the settings’ diversity [ 24 , 36 ]. Small ruminants bred in extensive farming systems are more exposed to weather conditions, which implies a need for considering temperature, humidity, and even wind exposure in welfare assessments.…”

Section: Sheep and Goat Extensive Production Systems: The Importance ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Providing some sort of shelter, whether for feeding or for protection from climate extremes, will result in higher welfare levels [ 40 , 41 ]. However, the extension and type of landscape in which these animals are generally kept may preclude the building of such shelters [ 24 ]. Thus, including the presence of shade/shelter and its accessibility, should be considered as an important indicator of animal comfort.…”

Section: Sheep and Goat Extensive Production Systems: The Importance ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Extensive Sheep and Goat Production: The Role of Novel Technologies towards Sustainability and Animal Welfare

Silva

Sacarrão-Birrento

Almeida

et al. 2022

Sheep and goat extensive production systems are very important in the context of global food security and the use of rangelands that have no alternative agricultural use. In such systems, there are enormous challenges to address. These include, for instance, classical production issues, such as nutrition or reproduction, as well as carbon-efficient systems within the climate-change context. An adequate response to these issues is determinant to economic and environmental sustainability. The answers to such problems need to combine efficiently not only the classical production aspects, but also the increasingly important health, welfare, and environmental aspects in an integrated fashion. The purpose of the study was to review the application of technological developments, in addition to remote-sensing in tandem with other state-of-the-art techniques that could be used within the framework of extensive production systems of sheep and goats and their impact on nutrition, production, and ultimately, the welfare of these species. In addition to precision livestock farming (PLF), these include other relevant technologies, namely omics and other areas of relevance in small-ruminant extensive production: heat stress, colostrum intake, passive immunity, newborn survival, biomarkers of metabolic disease diagnosis, and parasite resistance breeding. This work shows the substantial, dynamic nature of the scientific community to contribute to solutions that make extensive production systems of sheep and goats more sustainable, efficient, and aligned with current concerns with the environment and welfare.

“…In recent years, different systems for evaluating animal welfare on farm have been developed [4] founded on animal-based and/or management-and resource-based indicators. Animal-based indicators are direct indicators of the welfare of the animal, while management-and resource-based indicators (such as nutrition management or provision of shelter) are also relevant for more comprehensively assessing the welfare issue [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Risk Categorization in On-Farm Welfare in Different-Sized Dairy Sheep Flocks

Salari,

Roncoroni,

Mariottini

et al. 2024

The objective of the present work was to categorize the risks in the on-farm welfare of dairy sheep in semi-extensive systems in order to highlight if risks in welfare vary according to the farm size. To the best of our knowledge, this study constitutes one of the few categorizations of the risks in the welfare of dairy sheep reared semi-extensively. The survey was conducted on 12 semi-extensive dairy sheep farms in Tuscany (Central Italy), which were classified according to flock size: <500, from 500 to 1000, and >1000. The results showed an adequate rating for all the farms included in the study. The most critical issues concerned the ratio between the number of stockpersons and the number of animals within the farms, the small decubitus areas, the lack of udder cleaning procedures during milking operations, and, in terms of biosecurity, the lack of prevention, control, and eradication plans for the most important infectious ovine diseases. The results show that different items in the five areas evaluated, including the assessments of management of the flock, the number of daily inspections, and the hygiene of the water supplies are associated with the farm size. In large farms, the assessment of management of the flock was better, but the number of daily inspections and the hygiene of the water supplies were worse.