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Indicator tools for on-farm monitoring of welfare attributesThe overall technical objective of the main project 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. The outcome will be a set of welfare indicator tools that are road-tested for commercial herds with benchmarks established that reflect good animal husbandry practice. The tools will amalgamate into a Welfare Toolkit to support the achievement of high standards of animal husbandry practice on farms. This is an innovative concept for the development of stockmanship and animal husbandry skills, and promotion of best practice standards. It will form a firm foundation for the industry to manage welfare risk. |
Expected outcomes of this project
| Benefit |
| The welfare provenance of NZ dairy cattle can be defended using herd and system level indicators that are relevant for our systems and able to be implemented in commercial farm situations |
| Information flows from research to farm level to support skills in stockmanship and animal husbandry, resulting in improved welfare outcomes for dairy animals. |
