Review: Assessment of dairy cow welfare at pasture: measures available, gaps to address, and pathways to development of ad-hoc protocols

Aubé, L.; Mialon, Marie-Madeleine; Mollaret, E.; Mounier, Luc; Veissier, Isabelle; Roches, Alice de Boyer Des

doi:10.1016/j.animal.2022.100597

Cited by 10 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The measurement methods for each of the 32 measures are summarised in Table 1 , Table 2 , Table 3 and Table 4 , along with their threshold values. Due to the lack of established thresholds for welfare measures for pasture-based dairy cows [ 16 ], thresholds were set based on the authors’ opinion, guided, when available, by published recommendations. We assigned three categories of welfare to most measures: acceptable welfare (represented by green), marginal welfare (represented by orange), and unacceptable welfare (represented by red) as in Kaurivi et al [ 15 ], but where marginal welfare was thought to be an inappropriate category, e.g., for the question “do you use pain relief for disbudding”, we assigned only two categories (red and green) (see Table 1 , Table 2 , Table 3 and Table 4 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practicability of a Time-Limited Welfare Assessment Protocol for Pasture-Based Dairy Farms, and a Preliminary Assessment of Welfare Outcome Thresholds

Sapkota¹,

Laven²,

Müller³

et al. 2022

Animals

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This study assessed a new time-limited protocol developed for pasture-based cows across 23 dairy farms. The process started prior to milking with a questionnaire, followed by an assessment of resources (16 farms only) and behavioural observation of cows at pasture. Remaining animal-based measures were assessed during milking, usually by two assessors (one parlour based and one outside). The protocol proved to be practical and feasible with limited changes needed, except for the assessment of water availability and behaviour. As most cows could access only one water trough, distance between troughs was not a measure of water availability, while the observation of a large numbers of cows at pasture for 30 min resulted in few observations and an uncertain denominator (effective number of observed cows). Further research is needed to determine the best way of assessing water availability and cow behaviour in a time-limited assessment of pasture-based cows. Three animal-based measures (broken tails, dirtiness, and coughing) had mean values higher than the author-determined acceptable thresholds, while <50% of farms met trough cleanliness and track condition targets, and none met the criteria for shelter and shade. This was a sample of farms based on convenience, so more data are required to establish the representativeness of these results. Such testing should involve assessment of the repeatability and reliability of the measures in our protocol.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%