Proposal for three modifications for the Welfare Quality© protocol for dairy cattle.

Abstract

The results of three Dutch animal welfare assessment protocols were compared with a modified Welfare Quality® assessment protocol (WQ) on 60 dairy farms in the Netherlands, representing farms with good, moderate and poor welfare, as determined by their local veterinarians. It was one of our objectives to determine if welfare indicators that were easier and faster to measure would correlate with more time consuming animal-based measurements of the modified WQ. Several of the indicators of the modified WQ correlated well with those of three other welfare assessment protocols, that are used in the Netherlands. For example, the number of collisions with the dividers correlated with the width of the freestall (r2 = 0.63; p < 0.03) and time needed to lie down had a correlation with the diagonal of the freestall (distance of the neck rail to the curb) (r2 = 0.24; p < 0.06). Next, an alternative welfare assessment protocol was designed with components of the three Dutch protocols. The outcomes of this new protocol showed good agreement with the modified WQ, only 10% of the farms had a discordant outcome. Execution of this new welfare monitor takes approximately 1.5 h for a farm with 100 dairy cows. Thus it appeared to be possible to create a protocol that is less time consuming and has a comparable outcome to the modified WQ protocol.