Tackling the future challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry - vTI

RAHMANN G & GODINHO D (Ed.) (2012): Tackling the Future Challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry.
Proceedings of the 2 nd OAHC, Hamburg/Trenthorst, Germany, Sep 12-14, 2012
tion curve. Also the temperament of cows had a lower rank in organic production which may be due
to a less stressful environment or different attitudes among the farmers.
Figure 1. Traits intuitively mentioned as important by organic and conventional dairy farmers.
Proportion of farmers (%) that mentioned the trait on the y-axis
Finally, our results show higher interest in traits related to profitability and animal welfare than
traits related to the environment, such as methane production and dual purpose animals, i.e. combined
milk and beef production.
Table 1. Least square mean differences in rank between respondents from conventional
and organic herds (low values indicate high ranking)
Conventional Organic
Trait LSM StErr LSM StErr F-stat p-value
Calving ability 6.7 0.19 7.0 0.31 1.1 0.297
Claw and leg health 4.7 0.20 5.3 0.32 3.1 0.078
Milk production (ECM) 4.6 0.23 5.4 0.38 3.6 0.059
Disease resistance 7.9 0.23 6.6 0.38 8.9 0.003
Feed conversion 7.3 0.21 7.2 0.35 0.2 0.639
Longevity 3.3 0.20 3.4 0.32 0.0 0.918
Methane production 14.3 0.10 14.2 0.17 0.4 0.518
Lactation curve 7.6 0.23 8.7 0.37 7.2 0.008
Mastitis resistance 5.2 0.21 4.4 0.34 4.8 0.030
Beef production 13.0 0.11 12.8 0.19 1.3 0.260
Parasite resistance 12.5 0.16 11.7 0.27 7.1 0.008
Fertility 4.7 0.18 4.7 0.30 0.0 0.833
Temperament 7.4 0.24 8.2 0.39 3.0 0.085
Carcass classification 12.7 0.11 13.0 0.18 2.1 0.145
Roughage intake 8.0 0.22 7.5 0.37 1.3 0.250
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