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On-farm welfare assessment systems: what are the recording costs?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2023

JT Sørensen*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Animal Health, Welfare, and Nutrition Research Centre Foulum DK-8830, Tjele, Denmark
T Rousing
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Animal Health, Welfare, and Nutrition Research Centre Foulum DK-8830, Tjele, Denmark
SH Møller
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Animal Health, Welfare, and Nutrition Research Centre Foulum DK-8830, Tjele, Denmark
M Bonde
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Animal Health, Welfare, and Nutrition Research Centre Foulum DK-8830, Tjele, Denmark
L Hegelund
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Animal Health, Welfare, and Nutrition Research Centre Foulum DK-8830, Tjele, Denmark
*
* Contact for correspondence and requests for reprints: jantind.Sorensen@agrsci.dk
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Abstract

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To illustrate that different approaches lead to different costs a cost calculation on four different welfare assessment systems for four different animal species has been carried out; an integrated pig herd (450 sows), a dairy cattle herd with automatic milking (90 cows), an organic egg production system (3000 layers) and a mink farm (1000 mink). We calculated the cost to be: €375 per annum for the mink farm and €2205, €2430 and €2435 for the egg production system, the AMS dairy herd and the integrated pig farm, respectively. The costs can be reduced by: reducing the number of indicators and/or the recording frequency, reducing sample sizes, more intensive use of existing data and by exchanging external for internal recordings.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2007 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

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