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Poster 5
Luigi Calamari presents Poster 5 during the poster sessions in the Aula.
Session theme 1: Development, validation and automated measurements of indicators of animal welfare
PRELIMINARY STUDY TO DEVELOP A REFERENCE TOOL TO
VALIDATE THE MODELS OF ANIMAL WELFARE ASSESSMENT IN
DAIRY FARMS
L. Calamari, S. Caré, A. Ferrari, G. Bertoni
Istituto di Zootecnica, Facoltà di Agraria, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza, Italy
The objective assessment of the animal welfare in dairy farms is a very complex and controversial
task. The main problems are related to the choose of the indicators to include in the models of
welfare assessment and to the aggregation of the scores obtained for each indicator in a weighted
overall welfare score. Then, the models have to be validated, but a gold standard does not exist.
The aim of this study was to compare the results obtained with the application of our model of
welfare assessment (IDSW: Integrated Diagnostic System Welfare) with more objective welfare
assessment based on cortisol and some metabolic parameters. The IDSW, used in 8 dairy farms,
considers indirect and direct indicators and calculates a standardized (0-100 scale) overall welfare
score (OW). Blood samples were collected, using standardized procedure to avoid stress at
sampling, from 10 cows (30-120 days in milk) per farm. On samples the basal level of cortisol and
the parameters of the Piacenza Metabolic Profile were measured. Farms were subdivided in two
groups according to OW (75 as threshold) and blood parameters were processed using analysis of
variance and principal components analysis (PCA).
The OW was acceptable in 4 farms (greater than 75) and ranged between 70 to 75 in the other 4
farms. The latter farms showed greater values of cortisol (10.04 vs. 6.99 ng/ml; p=0.08) and glucose
(4.40 vs. 4.09 mmoL/L; p