Ethical issues in livestock breeding have been in focus of public interest recently. A strong attention is paid to living space, ability to express natural behaviour, and good care of animals known as welfare. Presented thesis aims in evaluation of animal welfare indicators on 20 farms with organic dairy production using the methodology of Welfare Quality (WQ). The following criteria were assessed: absence of prolonged hunger and thirst, comfort around resting, ease of movement, absence of injuries, disease, and pain induced by management procedures, expression of social and other behaviours, human-animal relationship, and emotional state. These criteria are combined into four basic principles: good feeding, good housing, good health, and appropriate behaviour. Principal attention is paid to the relationship between animal welfare and health.
Most farms showed high scoring of good feeding including the proportion of very lean cows and sufficient water supply. Good housing got also high evaluation, because the organic farming standards require loose housing and majority of time spent grazing on pastures. Lower scoring of good health was caused by dehorning on a part of farms, which decreases the absence of injuries evaluation. Farms had mostly low proportion of lame cows, cows with lesions and hairless patches, and cows with discharges and diarrhoea; no cow had mastitis. No expression of agonistic behaviour was recorded, the scoring of human-animal relationship and positive emotional state was fairly good, too. Obtained scores were generally higher compared to results from conventional farms published in literature. All farms were evaluated as enhanced or excellent.
Larger herds had generally lower scoring of human-animal relationship, but higher scoring of positive emotional state. Farms with dehorned animals exhibited lower proportion of very lean cows and nasal discharge. A higher percentage of lame cows was found on farms with worse cleanliness compared to farms with cleaner conditions. Proportion of lame cows correlated with the proportion of very lean cows, and together with the proportion of cows with integument alterations it was influenced by the comfort around resting.
It was confirmed that good conditions of cow breeding and good welfare lead to better health and behaviour of animals. Organic farming creates favourable conditions for good animal health and welfare. The output of the thesis provides farmers an evaluation of animal welfare on their farms and a comparison with other farms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:nusl.cz/oai:invenio.nusl.cz:258602 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Slavíková, Eva |
| Contributors | Chaloupková, Helena, Ilona, Ilona |
| Publisher | Česká zemědělská univerzita v Praze |
| Source Sets | Czech ETDs |
| Language | Czech |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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