Monitoring welfare in practice on Dutch dairy farms

Abstract

The results of three welfare assessment protocols have been correlated with the Welfare Quality® assessment protocol on 60 dairy farms in the Netherlands. After adaptations to the WQ protocol, an alternative assessment protocol could be constructed of components of the other three. This had a correlation with the adapted WQ of 0.88. Execution of this new welfare monitor takes approximately 1.5 h for a farm with 100 dairy cows. This protocol is now being integrated in the Koekompas (=Cow Compass), a management assistance tool