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Charlotte Hallén Sandgren presents Oral paper 6
In session 1: Development, validation and automated measurements of indicators of animal welfare
Thursday, 11 September 2008 from 12h15-12h30 in the Aula chaired by Isabelle Veissier
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Oral paper 6
CAN CATTLE WELFARE BE ASSESSED USING A PRE-COLLECTED
REGISTER DATA?
A. Lindberg 1 , C.H. Sandgren 1 , L. Keeling 2
1 Swedish Dairy Association, Kalmar, Sweden
2 Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Animal Environment and Health, Uppsala,
Sweden
The aim of this study was to investigate if herds being at risk of a ”welfare deficiency” could be
identified via pre-collected data on production, fertility, disease/health and culling.
In 55 randomly selected dairy herds, animal-based measurements of cleanliness, body condition (in
cows, calves and young stock), injuries, lameness and rising behaviour (in cows only) were
recorded. A herd was a case of ”welfare deficiency” if it had a score among the 10% worst on ≥2 of
these measurements.
Sixty-six potential welfare indicators were identified from the register data and reduced by
multivariable methods to identify indicators with a significant effect on one or more of the animalbased
measurements. The performance of each indicator in classifying case herds was evaluated at
three cut-offs corresponding to its 80th, 90th and 95th percentile. At each cut-off the minimum set
of indicators that could identify most case herds was identified (optimising sensitivity).
In a second step, the same procedure was performed on these selected minimum sets, while
optimising on specificity. The resulting model contained three different fertility parameters as well
as calf mortality, and correctly classified 85% of the herds. Sensitivity was 69%. For credibility
reasons, cow and young stock mortality were added. The final model, comprising three different
fertility parameters and three different mortality parameters, correctly classified 85% of the herds
with 85% sensitivity.
The results indicate that fertility and early mortality data provide valuable information about
welfare by their broad ability to reflect stockmanship and management in the dairy herd. We
believe that consistently high mortality rates and/or poor fertility may be an indication of failure in
monitoring and/or acting on signals of animal performance.
Contact information: Ann Lindberg or email charlotte.sandgren@svdhv.org
Complete address: Swedish Dairy Association, P.O. Box 932, SE-391 29 Kalmar, Sweden
Species: Dairy cattle