Eliminative behaviour of dairy cows

Faeces plays a prominant role in the transmission of three major diseases in housed cows, namely, lameness, mastitis and Johne’s disease (Amory et al., 2006; Hughes, 1999; Anon., 2002). Cows show no evidence of latrine behaviour and because their eliminative patterns appear to be random, it is assumed that they have little control over it and that they make no attempt to avoid bodily contamination with excreta (e.g., Hafez and Schein, 1962). The cleanliness of housed cattle is therefore considered to be solely a management issue. At pasture, cattle are known to strongly avoid grazing near dung patches where faeces and the surrounding contaminated grass act as reservoirs for parasites (Marten and Donker, 1964a;b). Michel (1955) found bovine grazing to be highly selective and, when tested, forage selected by cattle contained fewer lungworm larvae than random samples. An area of forage up to six times greater than that covered by faeces can be rejected (Phillips, 1993). There appears to be an odd dichotomy between the well-documented strong aversion to grazing near faeces as a means of controlling parasite intake and the apparent lack of regard for bodily cleanliness when contamination with faeces also has real health consequences for the cow, suggesting that more research is required to understand if and why this dichotomy exists. Previous studies have looked at the posture of the cow when voiding (Aland et al., 2002), the daily pattern of faeces deposition in different housing systems (Brantas, 1968; Seo et al., 2003; Aland et al., 2002; Hörning and Kramer, 2003), and their lying on clean, freshly-grazed grass when at pasture (Broom et al., 1975). However, relatively little is yet known about whether cattle show any intentional avoidance of bodily contact with excreta or not, or whether there are any specific environmental, social or individual stimuli which influence eliminative behaviour

OK-Net EcoFeed: Organic Knowledge Network for Monogastric Animal Feed

When feeding organic farm animals, the goal is to offer balanced diets that are fully organic and from home-grown or regionally-sourced feedstuffs. For monogastrics, pigs and poultry, updated European legislation will come into force in 2021 which will require that “at least 30% of the feed shall come from the farm itself or, if this is not feasible or such feed is not available, shall be produced in cooperation with other organic or in-conversion production units and feed operators using feed and feed material from the same region.” (Regulation EU, 2018). Achieving diets containing 100% organic feed for monogastrics is problematic, and current EU Regulations acknowledge this difficulty by allowing the use of 5% non-organic feed. However, this will cease when the updated legislation comes into force. Senior Livestock Researcher Lindsay Whistancereports on progress being made by the OK-Net EcoFeed project to address the issues

The process of researching animal health and welfare planning

’Minimising medicine use in organic dairy herds through animal health and welfare planning’, ANIPLAN, is a CORE-Organic project which was initiated in June 2007. The main aim of the project is to investigate active and well planned animal health and welfare promotion and disease prevention as a means of minimising medicine use in organic dairy herds. This aim will be met through the development of animal health and welfare planning principles for organic dairy farms under diverse conditions based on an evaluation of current experiences. This also includes application of animal health and welfare assessment across Europe. In order to bring this into practice the project also aims at developing guidelines for communication about animal health and welfare promotion in different settings, for example, as part of existing animal health advisory services or farmer groups such as the Danish Stable School system and the Dutch network programme. The project is divided into the following five work packages, four of which comprise research activities with the other focused on coordination and knowledge transfer, through meetings, workshops and publications. The content of this set of workshop proceedings reflects the fact that the workshop in Fokhol in Norway was held at a relatively early stage with regard to certain joint activities and methodological development. Training in animal welfare assessment had taken place for the first time in the project a couple of months previous to this workshop, and the results in terms of inter-observer reliability are presented by the organisers of this training workshop, Solveig March, Lisi Gratzer and Jan Brinkmann and their supervisor Christoph Winckler. This forms a good background for a reliable data collection in all countries. A presentation from a newly employed Ph.D. student linked to the ANIPLAN project, Lindsay Kay Whistance, gives insight into the study of defecation behaviour in dairy cattle. Although not directly part of the ANIPLAN studies, the presentation is particularly relevant to the considerations regarding animal welfare in housed and outdoor systems. Gidi Smolders from the Netherlands presented a paper about a Dutch farmer group initiative with a strong element of farmer ownership. Mette Vaarst contributes with a paper on farmer learning and empowerment in groups, with a background of Danish experiences with the so-called ‘Stable Schools’. Two papers by Roderick and Vaarst reflect the workshop discussions about research methodologies and the various contexts and conditions for farmer group work. These two papers demonstrate the complexity of the research requirements when conducting a trans-national and cross-disciplinary research project with many stakeholders

Farmer opinion on the process of health and welfare planning in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Norway and Switzerland

This report serves as a deliverable from the ANIPLAN project, with the original title ‘Evaluation report on state of the art regarding animal health and welfare planning in the participating countries’ (Deliverable 5.1). We chose to focus on the farmers’ perspective in each country, and ask the farmers who had participated in our project how they perceived the process of animal health and welfare planning. We did that using a questionnaire which each participant used in an interview with the farmer, asking some specific questions with the aim to evaluate how the farmers had experienced the ANIPLAN approach. We found that this focus was important as a supplement to other outcomes from the project, such as reduction of medicines (Ivemeyer et al., 2011) and improvement of animal based parameters (Gratzer et al., 2011). Furthermore potential scenarios for implementation of this concept into practice can be developed from the farmers responses

The dialogue with farmers

This report covers the project outcome Deliverable 4.2 ‘Analysis completed after a joint effort to identify possibilities in each country as how to facilitate the best possible dialogue regarding animal health and welfare’ as part of the European CORE Organic project ‘Minimising medicine use in organic dairy herds through animal health and welfare planning.’ The work was intended to understand the processes and was analysed from the perspective of the key animal health and welfare (AHW) planning principles developed as part of the project. The analysis was completed on transcripts of interviews of facilitators and advisors who had participated in the ANIPLAN project, some of them as partners in the project group. If animal health and welfare planning is to gain widespread use among organic farmers, communication between farmers and between farmers and advisors and other actors in the organic farming environment is crucial. Whilst other forms of communication regarding the role and benefits of AHW assessment systems, such as benchmarking, may be the motivational catalyst needed to encourage engagement in the process, a creative dialogue with the individual farmer is necessary when identifying goals and planning means to reach the desired goals. In order to understand how this dialogue works in practice, and what issues arise, a series of interviews were conducted in all of the ANIPLAN participating countries, involving persons directly involved and those with other experiences. The analysis of the interviews was based on a theoretical framework concerning learning, knowledge and empowerment and a functional framework based on the animal health and welfare principles developed as an output from the ANIPLAN project

Farmer groups for animal health and welfare planning in European organic dairy herds

A set of common principles for active animal health and welfare planning in organic dairy farming has been developed in the ANIPLAN project group of seven European countries. Health and welfare planning is a farmer‐owned process of continuous development and improvement and may be practised in many different ways. It should incorporate health promotion and disease handling, based on a strategy where assessment of current status and risks forms the basis for evaluation, action and review. Besides this, it should be 1) farm-specific, 2) involve external person(s) and 3) external knowledge, 4) be based on organic principles, 5) be written, and 6) acknowledge good aspects in addition to targeting the problem areas in order to stimulate the learning process. Establishing farmer groups seems to be a beneficial way of stimulating a dynamic development on the farms towards continuous improvement, as in this case with focus on animal health and welfare planning. Various factors influence the process in different contexts, e.g. geographical, cultural, traditional factors, and a proper analysis of the situation as well as the purpose of the group is necessary, and can relevantly be negotiated and co‐developed with farmers as well as facilitators before being implemented. Farmer groups based on farmer‐to‐farmer advice and co‐development need a facilitator who takes on the role of facilitating the process and ‘decodes’ him‐ or herself from being ‘expert’

Animal health and welfare planning in organic dairy cattle farms

Continuous development is needed within the farm to reach the goal of good animal health and welfare in organic livestock farming. The very different conditions between countries call for models that are relevant for different farming types and can be integrated into local practice and be relevant for each type of farming context. This article reviews frameworks, principles and practices for animal health and welfare planning which are relevant for organic livestock farming. This review is based on preliminary analyses carried out within a European project (acronym ANIPLAN) with participants from seven countries. The process begins with gathering knowledge about the current status within a given herd as background for making decisions and planning future improvements as well as evaluating already implemented improvements. Respectful communication between the owner of the herd and other farmers as well as animal health and welfare professionals (veterinarians and advisors) is paramount. This paper provides an overview of some current animal health and welfare planning initiatives and explains the principles of animal health and welfare planning which are being implemented in ANIPLAN partner countries, in collaboration with groups of organic farmers and organisations

Education and advisor systems related to dairy organic farming in the participating ANIPLAN countries

This chapter is the report of ANIPLAN’s deliverable 4.1 titled: ‘Evaluation report on the state of the art regarding advisor systems, education of farmers and advisors and farmer groups in the participating countries’. The seven participating countries (UK, Switzerland, Austria, The Netherlands, Norway, Germany and Denmark) had widely different approaches to advisory systems and education. This is important to consider when integrating the outcomes of the ANIPLAN project into the various systems in different countries