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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 ,
T Rousing ,
SH Møller ,
M Bonde  and
L Hegelund
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

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.

Keywords

animal welfarelabour costson-farm welfare assessment systemsrecordings
Type
Research Article
Information
Animal Welfare , Volume 16 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on the Assessment of Animal Welfare at Farm and Group Level , May 2007 , pp. 237 - 239
Copyright
© 2007 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

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References

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