van Eerdenburg Frank J C M, Di Giacinto Alice M, Hulsen Jan, Snel Bert, Stegeman J Arjan
Department of Population Health Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, 3584 CL Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Department of Animal Sciences, Adaptation Physiology Group, Wageningen University, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Animals (Basel). 2021 Mar 19;11(3):881. doi: 10.3390/ani11030881.
The Welfare Quality assessment protocol (WQ) is the most extensive way to measure animal welfare. This study was set up to determine if resource-based welfare indicators, that are easier and faster to measure, could replace the more time consuming, animal-based measurements of the WQ. The WQ was applied on 60 dairy farms in the Netherlands, with good, moderate and poor welfare. The WQ protocol classified most farms (87%) as 'acceptable'. Several of the animal-based measures of WQ correlated well with measures in the environment. Using these correlations, an alternative welfare assessment protocol (new Welfare Monitor) was designed, which takes approximately 1.5 h for a farm with 100 dairy cows. Because the opinion of farmers about welfare assessment is important if one wants to improve conditions for the cows at a farm, another objective of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of the new Welfare Monitor for the farmer. Over two years, the farms were visited, and advice was given to improve the conditions at the farm. After the first welfare assessment and advice, farmers improved the conditions for their cows substantially. Farms where the category score had increased made more improvements on average than those that did not upgrade.
福利质量评估方案（WQ）是衡量动物福利最全面的方法。本研究旨在确定基于资源的福利指标（测量起来更简便快捷）是否能够取代耗时更长的基于动物的WQ测量方法。WQ应用于荷兰60个奶牛场，这些奶牛场的福利状况有好、中、差之分。WQ方案将大多数农场（87%）归类为“可接受”。WQ的一些基于动物的测量方法与环境测量方法具有良好的相关性。利用这些相关性，设计了一种替代性福利评估方案（新福利监测器），对于一个拥有100头奶牛的农场，使用该方案大约需要1.5小时。由于如果想要改善农场奶牛的状况，农民对福利评估的看法很重要，因此本研究的另一个目标是评估新福利监测器对农民的实用性。在两年多的时间里，研究人员走访了这些农场，并就改善农场状况提供了建议。在首次进行福利评估并给出建议后，农民们大幅改善了奶牛的饲养条件。类别得分提高的农场平均比未升级的农场改进更多。
