Herd expansion and the focus on low-cost milk production are potential threats to cow welfare in Ireland, according to farmers, vets and Teagasc dairy advisers.
Cow welfare is regarded as an essential part of the "green Ireland" brand. Any threat to cow welfare is a potential threat to the image of Irish dairy production and increasing demands from international buyers is likely to drive an even greater focus on good cow welfare in the future.
A year-long project to identify risks and protective strategies for cow welfare associated with dairy herd expansion called ProWelCow was set up by Teagasc.
Researchers Laura Boyle, Joanna Marchewka, Donagh Berry and John Mee found that the majority (77%) of farmers surveyed during the ProWelCow project had increased their herd size in the previous three years.
However, expanding farmers had made no extra investment in housing or roadways above those who had not expanded.
Herding on foot versus a quad
During interviews, 90% of vets and 87.5% of advisers agreed that the best way to herd cows is on foot. However, more than 30% of farmers used quads or tractors to herd cows.
Farmers who used a vehicle to herd the cows typically had larger herds with an average size of 152 cows, compared to those who herded cows on foot, who had an average herd size of 99 cows.
The Teagasc researchers, writing in the current issue of T-Research, concluded that the lack of investment in roadways, combined with the potential for faster herding with vehicles, and longer walking distances in large herds, posed lameness risks.
Overcrowding
They added that the lack of investment in housing poses risks of overcrowding.
Of the farmers surveyed, almost 33% farmers provided less than one cubicle per cow.
One-third of farmers surveyed provide less than one cubicle per cow.
Body condition
Farmers were more likely to raise body condition score as the main welfare issue, with 72.2% of them ranking it as the biggest issue. However, fewer vets (14%) and farm advisers (14%) ranked body condition is the biggest welfare issue.
Doreen Corridan, Munster AI, demonstrates body condition scoring at Gurteen College.
Lameness
More vets selected lameness as the main cause of poor welfare (28.3%) than farmers (13%) or advisers (2.2%).
The report concluded that lameness should have more weighting in the EBI.
Dairy assurance schemes
The group studied five different dairy assurance schemes as part of the project, including Bord Bia’s Sustainable Dairy Assurance Scheme (SDAS) in Ireland, the RSPCA/Freedom Food’s AssureWel in the UK, FrieslandCampina’s Cow Compass in the Netherlands and Arla’s Arlagarden in Denmark.
The report’s authors said that each of the schemes claimed to assure cow welfare to a greater (eg, AssureWel) or lesser (eg, SDAS) extent.
The report found that many of the dairy assurance schemes studied focus on records rather than the animals themselves.
However, they found that, with the exception of the RSPCA’s AssureWel, all schemes were deficient in assuring cow welfare because most of the indicators used were poorly defined and little information was provided to assessors on how to measure them.
They noted that many of the schemes relied more heavily on the inspection of records than of the animals themselves.
Critically, none of the schemes had any animal-based indicators specific to grass-based systems.
Conclusions
The main findings of the ProWelCow dairy cow welfare project were:
Poor body condition score, overcrowding during housing and lameness are all potentially important causes of poor cow welfare in expanding, low-cost, pasture-based systems.There is a pressing need for focused knowledge transfer on dairy cow welfare.Research is needed to identify animal-based indicators relevant to grass-based systems, new welfare traits, new ways of deriving weightings for such traits and ways of improving routine access to data on these or correlated traits.The current weighting on lameness in the EBI needs to be strengthened and animal-based indicators relevant to welfare (such as locomotion scoring) need to be included in the SDAS.In the long term, there is a need for investment in housing and infrastructure.Dairy cow lameness – a worldwide challenge
Watch: tackling lameness with locomotion scoring on Greenfield farm
Dairy management: heifer target weights
Dairy Day 2017 - Solutions for a growing sector
Herd expansion and the focus on low-cost milk production are potential threats to cow welfare in Ireland, according to farmers, vets and Teagasc dairy advisers.
Cow welfare is regarded as an essential part of the "green Ireland" brand. Any threat to cow welfare is a potential threat to the image of Irish dairy production and increasing demands from international buyers is likely to drive an even greater focus on good cow welfare in the future.
A year-long project to identify risks and protective strategies for cow welfare associated with dairy herd expansion called ProWelCow was set up by Teagasc.
Researchers Laura Boyle, Joanna Marchewka, Donagh Berry and John Mee found that the majority (77%) of farmers surveyed during the ProWelCow project had increased their herd size in the previous three years.
However, expanding farmers had made no extra investment in housing or roadways above those who had not expanded.
Herding on foot versus a quad
During interviews, 90% of vets and 87.5% of advisers agreed that the best way to herd cows is on foot. However, more than 30% of farmers used quads or tractors to herd cows.
Farmers who used a vehicle to herd the cows typically had larger herds with an average size of 152 cows, compared to those who herded cows on foot, who had an average herd size of 99 cows.
The Teagasc researchers, writing in the current issue of T-Research, concluded that the lack of investment in roadways, combined with the potential for faster herding with vehicles, and longer walking distances in large herds, posed lameness risks.
Overcrowding
They added that the lack of investment in housing poses risks of overcrowding.
Of the farmers surveyed, almost 33% farmers provided less than one cubicle per cow.
One-third of farmers surveyed provide less than one cubicle per cow.
Body condition
Farmers were more likely to raise body condition score as the main welfare issue, with 72.2% of them ranking it as the biggest issue. However, fewer vets (14%) and farm advisers (14%) ranked body condition is the biggest welfare issue.
Doreen Corridan, Munster AI, demonstrates body condition scoring at Gurteen College.
Lameness
More vets selected lameness as the main cause of poor welfare (28.3%) than farmers (13%) or advisers (2.2%).
The report concluded that lameness should have more weighting in the EBI.
Dairy assurance schemes
The group studied five different dairy assurance schemes as part of the project, including Bord Bia’s Sustainable Dairy Assurance Scheme (SDAS) in Ireland, the RSPCA/Freedom Food’s AssureWel in the UK, FrieslandCampina’s Cow Compass in the Netherlands and Arla’s Arlagarden in Denmark.
The report’s authors said that each of the schemes claimed to assure cow welfare to a greater (eg, AssureWel) or lesser (eg, SDAS) extent.
The report found that many of the dairy assurance schemes studied focus on records rather than the animals themselves.
However, they found that, with the exception of the RSPCA’s AssureWel, all schemes were deficient in assuring cow welfare because most of the indicators used were poorly defined and little information was provided to assessors on how to measure them.
They noted that many of the schemes relied more heavily on the inspection of records than of the animals themselves.
Critically, none of the schemes had any animal-based indicators specific to grass-based systems.
Conclusions
The main findings of the ProWelCow dairy cow welfare project were:
Poor body condition score, overcrowding during housing and lameness are all potentially important causes of poor cow welfare in expanding, low-cost, pasture-based systems.There is a pressing need for focused knowledge transfer on dairy cow welfare.Research is needed to identify animal-based indicators relevant to grass-based systems, new welfare traits, new ways of deriving weightings for such traits and ways of improving routine access to data on these or correlated traits.The current weighting on lameness in the EBI needs to be strengthened and animal-based indicators relevant to welfare (such as locomotion scoring) need to be included in the SDAS.In the long term, there is a need for investment in housing and infrastructure.Dairy cow lameness – a worldwide challenge
Watch: tackling lameness with locomotion scoring on Greenfield farm
Dairy management: heifer target weights
Dairy Day 2017 - Solutions for a growing sector
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