Animal welfare 2008/09

Animal wellbeing is the foundation of dairy farming. Healthy animals are productive animals. Also, being able to continue to assure consumers, regulators and our fellow citizens in general that we look after animals well is important for our ongoing farming business. Animal welfare applies not just on the farm, but also for off-farm activities such as transport of dairy cattle. Research and development helps to ensure that our industry is doing things right by our cows and that there's an understanding of this internationally, among consumers and regulators.

Below is a summary of projects carried out during the 2008/09 season in the Animal Welfare area.
Note: These were proposed contracted amounts. Actual final paid amounts may vary from these numbers.

Project	Project Number	Description	Partners	Funding (Excl. GST)
Issues Management and Reference Group	AW801	To provide guidance and expertise to the animal welfare programme of work, especially in regard to its risk.	DairyNZ Ltd	$70,000
Meeting NAWAC Codes/ Emerging Issues	AW802	To provide information about current legal minimum animal welfare standards and emerging issues to dairy farmers, as needed.	DairyNZ Ltd	$67,000
Best On-Farm Practice for Animal Welfare	AW803	To provide best practice guidelines on dairy cattle welfare to dairy farmers for bobby calves, winter housing and acceptable body condition for cull cows.	DairyNZ Ltd	$130,000
Promote Good Stockmanship	AW804	To improve farmer awareness and understanding of good stockmanship as it relates to dairy farming and to encourage the practical application of good stockmanship on-farm through training.	DairyNZ Ltd	$80,000
Indicator tools for on-farm monitoring of welfare attributes	AW805	The overall technical objective is to evaluate and benchmark an array of indicator tools for their relevance, practicality and ability to reflect the welfare status of animals on New Zealand dairy farms. This is a long-term objective and work in this schedule refers to the first year of what is planned as a five year programme which leverages funding for research from FRST. The output will be a set of welfare indicator tools that are road-tested for commercial herds with benchmarks established that reflect good animal husbandry practise. The tools will amalgamate into a Welfare Toolkit to support development of Best On-Farm Practice (AW803; Rob Gregory). This is an innovative concept for the development of stockmanship and animal husbandry skills and promotion of best practise standards and will contribute to a solid base from which the industry can manage welfare risk.	DairyNZ Ltd	$265,000
Bobby Calf Farmer Survey	AW806	To provide information about current farmer attitudes towards the treatment of bobby calves and their understanding.	DairyNZ Ltd	$110,000
Development of welfare indicators for thermal stress and phase 1 for condition score	AW807	Help sustain a competitive New Zealand dairy industry and maintain success in key markets by demonstrating that the welfare of New Zealand cows conform to best practice and market expectations.	AgResearch Ltd	$143,000
Welfare Communications Initiatives	AW808	To develop a co-ordinated and centralised strategy for communicating key messages about the animal welfare programme of work to the wider media and key stakeholders.	DairyNZ Ltd	$40,000
Winter Confinement Management	AW809	To develop scientifically based supporting data for Best On-Farm Practice guidelines for winter confinement systems in Southland. Farmers that manage confinemnet systems have improved understanding and knowledge of the risks and how to manage them.	DairyNZ Ltd	$81,000
Stakeholder Monitoring - barriers and incentives to uptake	AW810	To explore and understand the constraints to farmer adoption of animal welfare guidelines and identify effective means of promoting best practice on-farm.	DairyNZ Ltd	$70,000
Predictive model for thermal stress (phase 1)	AW811	Help sustain a competitive New Zealand dairy industry and maintain success in key markets by demonstrating that the welfare of New Zealand cows conform to best practice and market expectations.	AgResearch Ltd	$163,000
Automatic measurement of human-animal interactions	AW812	This project aims to use autonomic measurement methodology to study interactions between humans and dairy cattle.	AgResearch Ltd	$36,000
Reactivity as a measure of animal welfare. Testing potential measures of reactivity	AW813	This project aims to test measures of reactivity that have potential as indicators of overall welfare state in calves and follow the changes in these test as the calves age. This is part of a multi-year project that will validate these tests on-farm and link them to welfare status.	AgResearch Ltd	$55,000