Acknowledgements Book of abstracts - Publicaties - Vlaanderen.be

Christine Leeb presents Poster 33 during the poster sessions in the Aula.
Session theme 4: Assessing health status of groups of animals in relation to welfare
105
Poster 33
LUMBAR AND STERNAL BODY CONDITION SCORE FOR DAIRY
GOATS
R. Wolf 2 , B. Patiss-Klingen 2 , J. Böhm 2 , H. Prosl 2 , C. Leeb 1
1 Institute of Livestock Sciences, Department of Sustainable Agricultural Systems, University of Natural
Resources, Applied Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria
2 Teaching, Research Farm of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria
The assessment of body condition using various scoring systems is a management tool widely used
in sheep and dairy cattle to monitor herd health. It is a measure of animals lipid and protein reserves
used in late gestation, early lactation and environmental adversity. It is also a function of frame and
reflects clinical disease, nutritional deficiencies and level of endoparasites burden.
As goats store their fat in omentum and perirenal region to a greater extend than other species, an
assessment of the lumbar region alone could be misleading. Therefore it was decided to use a
scoring system, which was based on a score described by Morand-Fehr (1989) and includes
palpation of the lumbar and costo-sternal region. However, this system was never validated, which
this study is aimed at.
During three visits to three dairy goat farms 200 animals were scored by three trained people using
the lumbar, sternal and a visual score. Additionally each animal was weighed, the length of withers
and heart girth measured, thickness of body fat between Tuber coxae and the femur head was a
measured using ultrasound and a brief clinical assessment was carried out. Additionally faecal
samples were taken individually.
Preliminary results show very good on farm practicability and satisfactory inter-observer
repeatability. Using Spearman Rank test significant correlation (p