While larger herds mean the cows have further to walk, higher stocking densities and longer milking times – the survey found that the bigger properties were better equipped to deal with animal welfare issues.
Dr David Beggs, PhD candidate at the Animal Welfare Science Centre at the University of Melbourne, said the larger operations often had better access to resources.
The survey set out to identify animal welfare risks as herd sizes increased.
Larger herds means some risk factors are greater including higher stocking density, more cows per worker and the higher risk of disease spreading as farmers increase the levels of feed in their operation.
«But what we also found was that the welfare outcomes that we were looking for didn’t increase, there was no more reported mastitis, lameness and other diseases,» Dr Beggs said.
«We had some questions around contentment and how quickly [the cows] are picked up on when they are sick and how quickly they are treated and they didn’t really differ between the different herd sizes.
«We think this is because there is a better capacity to put in strategies to manage that kind of thing, so for example a bigger herd is likely to have better trained staff and more likely to have specific protocols that they follow.
«And they’re more likely to have electronic monitoring in the dairy and computerized herd records and regular visits from a veterinarian, a heap of things like that mitigate the increased risks.
«There are a few things we need to look at carefully. Cows walk a bit further, so we need to do further research to see whether, assuming they come in in the same order, that cows at the back of the herd are suffering more than those at the front.
«The general story is a good news one; there are risks for animal welfare on dairy farms but they don’t appear to be related to an increase in herd size»
The survey sent out with the Australian Dairy Farmer magazine was filled out by 13 per cent of dairy farmers and represented 15 per cent of Australia’s milking herd.
This research was sparked by the fact the national dairy herd had risen 37 per cent over the last 10 years and numbers were expected to grow again this year.
«If we call a large herd one with more than 500 cows, large herds only represent about 13 per cent of Australian dairy farms but they represent more than 35 per cent of the cows that are milked, so it’s really important that we manage their welfare carefully,» Dr Beggs said.
Source: ABC
