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Seo Tetsuya presents Poster 48 during the poster sessions in the Aula.
Session theme 5: Development and improvement of welfare assessment protocols
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Poster 48
IMPROVED ANIMAL NEEDS INDEX (ANI) RELATED TO MILK
PRODUCTIVITY AND COW HEALTH ON JAPANESE DAIRY FARMS
T. Seo 1 , Y. Ono 1 , F. Kashiwamura 1 , S. Sato 2
1 Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, Obihiro, Hokkaido, Japan
2 Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University, Osaki, Miyagi, Japan
Purpose: An Animal Needs Index (ANI) has been proposed as a welfare assessment system that
mainly reflects housing environmental parameters. Although much research suggests that animalbased
parameters are useful, ANI has few parameters. The allotment of points overly emphasizes
outdoor areas; consequently, the welfare level of herds without outdoor areas is extremely low as
assessed by this system (Seo et al. 2007). Therefore, we improved ANI by adding some animalbased
parameters (e.g. BCS, rising behaviour, stall standing index, avoidance reaction, neck injury)
and by lowering the allotment of points for outdoor areas. We then assessed Japanese dairy farms
using the improved system. This study is intended to investigate whether relations exist between the
improved ANI data and some indicators such as milk productivity and animal health.
Methods: In all, 27 dairy farms with free-stall (12 farms) or tie-stall (15 farms) barns were assessed
using the improved ANI (ANI35L/2000-cattle). Milk productivity and veterinary treatment records
were used to calculate the correlation between the total score and each of five category scores using
Spearman’s rank correlation.
Results: The total score assessed by improved ANI correlated with productivity such as the average
milk price per litter (rs =0.47, p