Acknowledgements Book of abstracts - Publicaties - Vlaanderen.be

Fritha Langford presents Oral paper 37
In session 8: Application of welfare assessment protocols
Saturday, 13 September 2008 from 11h00-11h15 in the Aula chaired by Joy Mench
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Oral paper 37
THE USE OF QUALITATIVE BEHAVIOURAL ASSESSMENT TO
INVESTIGATE COW WELFARE ON ORGANIC AND NON-ORGANIC
DAIRY FARMS
F.M. Langford, K.M.D. Rutherford, M.C. Jack, L. Sherwood, F. Wemelsfelder, A.B.
Lawrence, M.J. Haskell
Animal Behaviour and Welfare, Sustainable Livestock Systems, SAC, West Mains Road, Edinburgh, U.K.
This study aimed to investigate relationships between health and welfare on twenty organic and
twenty non-organic UK dairy farms. Organic and non-organic farms were paired for housing type,
herd size and cow genetic-merit. On each farm, a number of qualitative and quantitative (e.g.
lameness-score, body-condition-score) welfare measures were recorded.
A list of twenty-one qualitative assessment terms to describe each herd (e.g. ‘happy’, ‘irritable’ and
‘overall-welfare’) was generated based on previous research. Two experimenters independently
scored these terms on 125mm lines after spending 2.5 days on each farm. Data were analysed using
linear mixed-models and correlations. Additionally, video-clips were collected of a humanapproach-test
on three cows from each farm. Twelve observers used Free-Choice-Profiling to
generate qualitative terms for the video-clips. Data were analysed with Generalized Procrustes
Analysis.
Experimenters showed excellent reliability for 13 of 21 terms. From these terms, experimenters
scored organic herds as more ‘sociable’ (Wald=7.5, p