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76
Poster 4
Luigi Calamari presents Poster 4 during the poster sessions in the Aula.
Session theme 1: Development, validation and automated measurements of indicators of animal welfare
SIMPLE METHOD TO EVALUATE FEEDS AND DIETS WITHIN THE
MODELS OF WELFARE ASSESSMENT IN DAIRY FARMS
S. Caré, L. Calamari, P. Bani, A. Minuti
Istituto di Zootecnica, Facoltà di Agraria, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza, Italy
The feeds and diet characteristics are important factors affecting productive, reproductive and
sanitary aspects in dairy herds, and that consequently can affect the animal welfare. Nevertheless,
the proposed models to assess welfare in dairy farms do not generally include relevant parameters
of feeds and feeding.
Aim was to propose a simplified method to evaluate feeds and diets in dairy farms, and to validate
the method comparing the results with reference methods. The method, that was used in 8 farms
(one set of observations per farm) a) estimates the chemical and nutritive characteristics of each
forage from a sensory evaluation (sight, smell and feel of physical characteristics); b) estimates dry
matter intake and diet characteristics (crude protein: CP; Net Energy: NEl; starch; and neutral
detergent fibre: NDF) for dry and lactating cows, from the field collected data on diet composition
and the characteristics of commercial feeds, together with the forages estimated characteristics; c)
evaluates the adequacy of dry and lactating cow’s diets, comparing supply with requirements. Feeds
samples were also collected and analyzed to calculate diet characteristics using reference methods.
The results obtained with simplified and with reference method were processed using linear
regression.
The diet characteristics estimated with the simplified method were very close to the results obtained
using reference method, with RSD values, for dry and lactating cow’s diet respectively, of 4.8 and
3.2% for NEl, 8.7 and 8.0% for NDF, and 14.7 and 10.0% for starch. The RSD values for CP was
4.3% for lactating cow’s diet and 22.0% for dry cow’s diet indicating some difficulties to estimate
CP in some forages, that represent the main components of the dry cows diets.
In conclusion the proposed method seems adequate to evaluate feeds and diets in the models of
welfare assessment in dairy farms.
Contact information: S. Caré or email luigi.calamari@unicatt.it
Complete address: Istituto di Zootecnica, Facoltà di Agraria, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore,
Via Emilia Parmense, 84 29100 Piacenza, Italy
Species: Dairy cattle