Influences on the assessment of resource- and animal-based welfare indicators in unweaned dairy calves for usage by farmers.

ABSTRACT: Consumers, industrial stakeholders, and the legislature demand a stronger focus on animal welfare of all livestock at the farm level by using suitable indicators in self-assessments. In order to deduce farms' animal welfare status reliably, factors that influence indicators' results need to be identified. Hence, this study aimed to apply possible animal welfare indicators for unweaned dairy calves on conventional dairy farms with early cow-calf separation and evaluate influencing factors such as age and sex of calves or climatic conditions on the applied indicators' results. An animal welfare assessment using 7 resource-based and 14 animal-based indicators was conducted at 42 typical Western German dairy farms (844 calves) in 2018 and 2019 by two observers. The effect of influencing factor

SUBMITTER: Hayer JJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8525503 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature