Monitoring welfare in practice on Dutch dairy farms
Publication date
2015-06-09
Authors
van Eerdenburg, Frank
Stegeman, Arjan
Snel, Bert
Hulsen, Jan
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Supervisors
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Document Type
Part of book
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Abstract
The results of three welfare assessment protocols have been correlated with the Welfare Quality® assessment protocol on 60 dairy farms in the Netherlands. After adaptations to the WQ protocol, an alternative assessment protocol could be constructed of components of the other three. This had a correlation with the adapted WQ of 0.88. Execution of this new welfare monitor takes approximately 1.5 h for a farm with 100 dairy cows. This protocol is now being integrated in the Koekompas (=Cow Compass), a management assistance tool.
Keywords
animal welfare, assessment, Dairy cattle, Taverne
Citation
van Eerdenburg, F J C M, Stegeman, J A, Snel, B & Hulsen, J 2015, Monitoring welfare in practice on Dutch dairy farms. in Proceedings of the XVII International Congress on Animal Hygiene. Kosice, Slovakia, pp. 24-25.