WelCow: Improving animal welfare in dairy herds by optimising welfare assessment methods for continuous use by farmers

There is a political and societal agenda towards establishing animal welfare assessment protocols in agricultural production systems. These can be as a basis for welfare improvement, consumer information and product labelling. In Norway, animal welfare (AW) is considered to be good and is safeguarded through strict legislation, regulations and auditing systems. However, there is a lack of scientific documentation of the welfare status of farm animals. The project WelCow has been given a Norwegian name, namely Kutrivsel. This emerged from a naming competition and suggestions from milk producers. The short title of WelCow is; Good welfare for cow and farmer. The goal is to be able to use health and production data to continuously improve the welfare of animals. We have now visited over 150 herds, and assessed animal welfare of dairy cows, but also of calves. In addition, one masters-student has assessed animal welfare of fattening bulls in 15 herds. In 2022 and 2023, we published the results from these visits in both scientific and popular science platforms. Additionally, we created some short video clips that were posted on the project page, on Facebook and Instagram. The project has had regular project meetings; monthly team meetings in 2021 and 2022, and every other month in 2023, as well as annual physical gatherings for the project group. We are also planning a final seminar for 2024 where we aim to present the results from the project and discuss animal welfare as a general topic. During the project period, we have had several student assignments as additional deliverables. In 2021, an app was developed and tested in several of the visited barns. After testing and improvements, the app is now complete. Because the farmer is the single most important factor in determining animal welfare (AW) on fram. The project WelCow has also investigated determinants of farmers' behaviours with the aim of tailoring knowledge transfer about how to further motivate to improve AW. Efficiently assessing and improving AW will enhance the sustainability of the dairy production systems. Enhanced AW has the potential to improve farmers' job satisfaction, and these links will be explored. Thus, the project will generate new knowledge and technology that promotes competitive, profitable and sustainable value chains in agriculture. The project has an updated web-page, and now in English as well: https://www.nmbu.no/en/research/projects/welcow

There is a political and societal agenda towards establishing animal welfare assessment protocols in agricultural production systems, as a basis for welfare improvement, consumer information and product labelling. In Norway, animal welfare (AW) is considered to be good and is safeguarded through strict laws, regulations and auditing systems. However, there is a lack of scientific documentation of the welfare status of farm animals, and about how to motivate farmers to adopt practices to improve AW beyond the minimum legal requirements. Therefore, assessing AW with reliable, valid and feasible on-farm measures is necessary. Recently, there has been scientific focus on the use of routine herd data (RHD) as a cost-effective diagnostic tool to estimate AW. Norway has a unique possibility to investigate how RHD efficiently can provide continuous information on animal welfare in dairy herds, as 98% of the dairy herds are members of the National Dairy Herd Registration System (NDHRS), containing 30 years of RHD. The dairy industry has developed an Animal Welfare herd Indicator (AWI) based on NDHRS, that aims to give a continuous estimate of animal welfare at herd level, and on separate sub-indicators, e.g. milk production, young-stock, calves, dehorning, and claw health. WelCow will assess animal welfare in dairy herds with an acknowledged protocol and use the results to validate and optimise the AWI. Because the farmer is the single most important factor in determining animal welfare, WelCow will investigate determinants of farmers' behaviours with the aim of tailoring knowledge transfer about how to further improve AW. Efficiently assessing and improving AW will enhance the sustainability of the dairy production systems. Enhanced AW has the potential to improve farmers' job satisfaction, and these links will be explored. Thus, the project will generate new knowledge and technology that promotes competitive, profitable and sustainable value chains in agriculture.