title / Behavioural studies relating to the welfare of intensively managed dairy cows
/ DEFRA
project code / AW1006
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs CSG 15
Research and Development
Final Project Report
(Not to be used for LINK projects)
Two hard copies of this form should be returned to:Research Policy and International Division, Final Reports Unit
DEFRA, Area 301
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An electronic version should be e-mailed to
Project title / Behavioural studies relating to the welfare of intensively managed dairy cows
DEFRA project code / AW1006
Contractor organisation and location / Animal Behavioural Sciences Department
Sustainable Livestock Systems
SAC, West Mains Road
Edinburgh, UK
Total DEFRA project costs / £ 350,939
Project start date / 01/04/00 / Project end date / 30/09/03
Executive summary (maximum 2 sides A4)
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CSG 15 (Rev. 6/02) 4
Projecttitle / Behavioural studies relating to the welfare of intensively managed dairy cows
/ DEFRA
project code / AW1006
Background
1. This project was stimulated by the FAWC Report on the Welfare of Dairy Cattle (FAWC, 1997), which expressed concern that ‘intensive housing of cows…could severely restrict expression of the cows’ normal behaviour’ (FAWC, 1997; paragraph 122).
2. The UK dairy industry is currently becoming more intensive, as typified by year-round housing systems for cows (‘zero-grazing’), and the use of high yielding strains of Holstein cows.
3. In other species of livestock, intensification is associated with the welfare issues including performance of abnormal behaviours, increased aggression, alterations to the temporal organisation of behaviour and fear of humans.
Project Aims
The aims of the study were therefore:
· To use a range of behavioural and physical measures to assess the effect of intensification factors on the welfare of dairy cows;
· To provide an understanding of the impact of housing duration, housing quality and genotype on cow welfare;
· To provide information for objective criteria to be applied in QA schemes and Codes of Practice to ensure high welfare standards.
Objective 1
· The aim of Objective 1 was to characterise the variation in UK dairy farms to create a sample of farms representative of current UK dairy farming systems.
· A farmer questionnaire was compiled and sent to volunteer farmers across the UK. Analysis of the 110 returns found that the primary variables distinguishing between farms were milk production level and type of housing (cubicles or straw).
· Five groups of farms were identified for the examination of the effects of housing duration, housing type and levels of production: high, medium and low milk production farms using cubicle housing in the winter only, high production zero-grazing farms with cubicle housing and medium production straw court systems.
Objective 2
· The aim of Objective 2 was to assess welfare on the identified farm types.
· Thirty-seven units across the UK were sampled. To standardise, only farms with Holstein Friesian cows, with more than 100 cows and with a feeding system that allowed all cows to eat at once were used. High or mid-lactation cows were observed. Cows were individually marked with their parity numbers.
Ø A range of measures relating to cow behaviour, cow health and physical condition, stockpersonship and building quality were taken on each farm.
Conclusions
Effects of zero-grazing with cubicle housing
· We found little evidence that intensification, in the form of zero-grazing, excessively restricted dairy cow behaviour. The performance of stereotypy was very rare in all farm types. High levels of milk production in both zero-grazing and conventional management systems did not lead to perturbations in feeding patterns or affect levels of aggression. Qualitative assessment of cow behaviour found cows on zero-grazing units to be more inquisitive, and therefore unfearful, when approached by a novel human.
· Zero-grazing systems were associated with higher than average lameness score and knee swellings relative to other farm types.
· Quality of stockpersonship was very good on all farms, but the highest on zero-grazing farms, as shown by the positive interactions shown by stockpersons toward cows. This was corroborated by the inquisitive nature of the cows’ interaction with an unfamiliar human.
· Zero-grazing farms generally had cubicles which were at or above the average length and width, and 7 out of 8 used mats or mattresses, which would contribute to leg health.
Effects of levels of milk production
· Little evidence that high levels of milk production in themselves were directly related to welfare problems, and older cows appeared more content.
· There were some problems specifically associated with low output systems of production; aggression at feeding times and frequency of hock swellings were higher, quality of stockhandling and cubicle quality on some of the farms was at the lower end of the range observed.
Effects of housing
Straw courts
· Cows in straw counts are less likely to be lame, and had fewer hock and knee injuries and behaviour of cows was more synchronised; we found no evidence of higher somatic cell counts in straw court farms.
· Aggression at the feed-face was higher in straw court animals, probably resulting from competition at feeding compounded by the synchronisation of behaviour.
· Cows on straw court farms were more aggressive towards a novel human, indicating that they may have also been more difficult to handle.
Cubicle housing:
· Lameness, and hock and knee swellings were higher in cubicles that had little room for the cows to lunge forward into as they rose from lying. Larger cows had a greater problem. The frequency of hock swellings was also affected by cubicle gradient, with very small gradients having a more detrimental effect than slightly higher or zero gradients.
· Cubicles with mats or mattresses meant that cows were less likely to feed at night indicating higher levels of comfort.
Physical condition
· Cow body condition score was negatively correlated with length of feedface per cow. Indicating the importance of access to the feeder as welfare and production issue.
Other management issues
· Over-representation of heifers at the feed-trough at peak feeding times suggests that they are hungry, and motivated to eat at this time despite the level of aggressive interactions that they incur. The cleanliness results suggest that heifers need more training to use cubicles, or that it must be ensured that they have sufficient clean lying areas.
· Good stockpersonship can buffer the effect of other challenges to cow welfare. Results from zero-grazing herds suggests that empathy with cows (as shown by positive behaviours towards cows, and the cows corresponding interactiveness and lack of aggression towards humans) contributes to good animal welfare on these units.
Overall conclusions
· Welfare emerges at a systems level allowing interaction between factors to balance each other out in terms of the overall impact on the animals’ welfare.
· At the same time overall welfare will be improved the greater the attention to critical components of the system indicating the importance of management.
· All systems have inherent welfare risks, and it is important to define the system-specific risks to focus intervention effort.
· Highly intensive systems (e.g. zero-grazing) as practised in the UK, were characterised in this study by above average levels of housing and stockmanship: in these systems our results suggest that welfare risks relate less to the issue of behavioural restriction and more to the physical strains imposed on the cow through being housed for long periods on hard surfaces.
· Straw court systems as practised in the UK appear to pose less of a risk to physical welfare but potentially raise behavioural issues through greater herd synchrony and competition for resources particularly for feed.
· Low output systems would benefit in welfare terms from more closely matching housing and management to high output systems including attention to details of cubicle design and elements of stockhandling.
CSG 15 (Rev. 6/02) 4
Projecttitle / Behavioural studies relating to the welfare of intensively managed dairy cows
/ DEFRA
project code / AW1006
Scientific report (maximum 20 sides A4)
To tab in this section press the tab key and the Control key together
Press the DOWN arrow once to move to the next question.
CSG 15 (Rev. 6/02) 4
Projecttitle / Behavioural studies relating to the welfare of intensively managed dairy cows
/ DEFRA
project code / AW1006
AW1006 ‘Behavioural studies relating to the welfare of intensively managed dairy cows’
Background
This project followed from a MAFF Open Competition by the same title, which in turn was stimulated by the FAWC Report on the Welfare of Dairy Cattle (FAWC, 1997). The primary reason for the Open Competition were FAWC’s concerns that intensive housing of cows and especially the housing of cows indoors all year could severely restrict expression of the cows’ normal behaviour (FAWC, 1997; paragraph 122).
There have been recent changes in the breeding, feeding and management of dairy cows in the United Kingdom that have the potential to adversely affect animal welfare. There is increased use of strains of cows, particularly those with Holstein genes that are highly selected for milk production (Simm, 1998). This has meant that the average annual milk production per cow has risen from around 5500 litres/cow/year in 1985, to about 7000 litres/cow/year in 2000, with the most productive cows now producing over 11, 000 litres/year. In addition to the change in genotype, particularly in recent years, economic factors have been driving the current trend towards intensification. Herd sizes have been increasing (Axient, 1998), as larger farms benefit from economies of scale (The Dairy Council, 2000). Some high-producing herds now practice a management system in which cows are housed during the summer as well as winter, rather than being put out to grass as in the traditional British system. There has also been an increase in mechanisation of feeding and milking systems, which has reduced the costs of labour on farms (FUKMMB, 1985; The Dairy Council, 2000).
In other species of farm livestock, the intensification that is now occurring in the dairy industry has been associated with welfare problems. Physical restriction of strongly motivated behaviours can lead to physiological stress (e.g. Jarvis et al., 2002) and the development of abnormal behaviours such as stereotypies (e.g. Mason, 1991; Lawrence and Terlouw, 1993). Cows readily develop stereotypies (e.g. tongue rolling) in tethered systems (e.g. Redbo et al., 1996), but when this project began there was no information on the extent of the performance of stereotypic behaviour under commercial conditions in the UK. Similarly, ‘barren’ environments typified by those found in intensive pig production can lead to alterations in time budgets and reduction in the diversity of the behavioural repertoire (Haskell et al., 1996; Wemelsfelder et al., 2000). The use of highly productive breeds, selected under intensive feeding regimes, have also been associated with health problems. For example, selection for high milk production in dairy cows is correlated with the genetic predisposition for an increase in mastitis and lameness (Pryce et al., 1997). Selection for production in broilers and layer hens is associated with leg weakness and lameness (Cransberg et al., 2001; Corr et al., 2003). There is concern that the use of high output strains, if not matched by excellent standards of management, will lead to welfare problems. For instance, the food intake of the animal and the quality of the diet provided must be sufficient to maintain yields, and to avoid metabolic disease (Veerkamp et al., 1995). The modern, highly selected dairy cow probably has a lower capacity than her predecessors to compensate for deficiencies in management, environment or nutrition (Stookey, 1994).
The trend in dairying in the UK towards the use of more intensive management systems and more highly productive strains of cow has raised the concern that the welfare of the cow in these systems might be adversely affected (FAWC, 1997). The use of ‘zero-grazing’ management systems in which cows are housed indoors throughout the summer period, as well as the usual winter housing period, have been identified as a particular risk to welfare as they may prevent the cow from expressing normal behaviour (FAWC, 1997).
The aim of this study was therefore to compare the behaviour and health of dairy cows in systems that differed in their degree of intensification. We aimed to use a range of behavioural and physical measures to assess the effect of intensification factors such as housing duration, housing type, level of production and genotype on the welfare of dairy cows. We chose to adopt a ‘systems level’ approach and measure cow welfare on a number of types of UK dairy farms that vary in their housing and management conditions. This approach would also give us a view of the current welfare conditions on UK dairy farms that could inform the development of Quality Assurance Standards or Codes of Practice.
Objective 1
Aim
The aim of the first part of the project was to characterise dairy farms across the United Kingdom. The intensive and time-consuming nature of the type of behavioural study required to address the problems identified by MAFF and FAWC, limits the number of farms that could be included in the study. We therefore needed to find a systematic way of categorising farms so that the sample of farms included in the main study were representative of current dairy farming systems in the UK.
Methods
Using the Holstein UK and Ireland Breed Society membership records, and from recommendations from SAC dairy consultants, we identified 300 dairy farmers and sent out letters inviting them to take part in the questionnaire. Those that replied positively were sent the questionnaire. The letters were distributed so that all the major dairying areas in England, Scotland and Wales were represented.
The questionnaire consisted of twenty-eight questions arranged in five subsections (see Appendix 1). The first of these sections covered general farm information on location, size, altitude, rainfall and soil type. The second section inquired about the housing system (cubicles or a straw-based system), how long the cows are kept inside in the winter and the month of turnout and housing. The third section had questions relating to the milking herd (i.e. breed of cow, total number of milking cows, size of groups that they were housed in, milk production, genetic merit for milk production, calving season, replacement policy, and number of people involved in the day-to-day care of the cows). The fourth section investigated the feeding system and had questions on the amount, type and method of feeding of concentrate and forage. In the last section, we asked whether farmers were registered in milk recording and health recording schemes and were members of a breed society.