Positive welfare
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3 min read
Positive welfare is a way of thinking about animal wellbeing that’s not just about avoiding suffering but about creating opportunities for cows to experience positive emotions, express natural behaviours, and live a good life. Cows are sentient animals. They feel things, from comfort and pleasure to pain and fear. Knowing this gives us a responsibility to move beyond simply meeting their basic needs to actively support their wellbeing.
Understanding sentience
The NZ Animal Welfare Act 1999 recognises animals as sentient, meaning they can experience both positive and negative emotions. This legal recognition underpins the importance of positive welfare.
Dairy cows can feel comfort and contentment as well as pain or fear. They are intelligent and social animals; they can learn, remember, make decisions, recognise humans and other cows and form strong bonds with herd mates.
Understanding this helps us support their wellbeing by providing positive experiences and minimising negative experiences. Supporting a good life means not only promoting positive experiences but also minimising negative experiences.
Ensuring high standards of care, preventing health problems, providing good nutrition, and handling animals calmly all help cows feel content and able to engage in behaviours that support their wellbeing.
What farmers have said
- Farmers tell us they care deeply about their cows and want to provide opportunities for positive experiences.
- Famers have told us they value positive welfare because it feels right to have healthy, happy cows. This motivates them and brings pride to their work.
- Better outcomes for cows can improve farmer satisfaction and mental health.
- It makes good business sense. Happier cows often mean better productivity and efficiency.
- It’s marketable - our consumers care about animal welfare. It aligns with evolving public expectations and values.
The evolution of welfare
Animal welfare was traditionally viewed through the “Five Freedoms ”, established in 1965, which focused on preventing negative experiences such as hunger, thirst, and discomfort. In 2015, the Five Domains Model was developed at Massey University. It is now an internationally recognised framework to understand welfare across all species, including zoo animals, livestock, and pets, by considering both positive and negative experiences.
Opportunities to support positive welfare
Environmental enrichment provides opportunities for animals to be challenged and interested by their surroundings, promoting both physical and mental wellbeing. You can provide environmental enrichment by:
- Providing cows with brushes or objects such as trees to scratch on. Cows will actively seek them out.
- Providing pasture access allows expression of natural behaviours and freedom of movement.
- Giving cows a choice of comfortable resting areas. This supports unrestricted lying and feelings of comfort.
- Providing calves with safe objects to allow them to explore, play, and learn. Providing brushes to engage in natural grooming behaviours and hanging objects for licking and oral manipulation.
Behavioural expression is a cow’s ability to perform natural behaviours that are important to their physical and mental wellbeing. New Zealand’s pasture-based dairy farm systems already provide opportunities for expression of natural behaviours such as:
- Ample access to spacious outdoor pastures to allow exploration, play and freedom of movement and lying.
- Space to interact socially and form positive social bonds.
You can provide additional opportunities for expression of natural behaviours by:
- Providing choice and control over their environment, like access to diverse feed types or to wooded areas.
- Providing cows with access to shade from trees or other shelters. DairyNZ research found cows actively use trees in hot weather as well as on cooler days, demonstrating their value to cows.
- Allowing cows to stay with their friends and stable social groups. Minimising mixing unfamiliar cows will reduce stress and support strong social bonds.
- Provide sufficient ‘cow time’ during the day, when cows can choose what to do outside of milking or grazing for energy needs. This allows them to rest, socialise, and explore.
Human and animal interactions
The relationship between farmers and their cows is central to dairy wellbeing. Daily interactions shape how cows perceive and respond to humans, directly impacting their stress levels, health, and productivity. Good stockmanship and skilful empathetic handling of livestock is possibly one of the most effective improvements to animal and human wellbeing you can make. Calm, confident handling saves time and is less stressful for both cows and people, particularly during milking and yarding.
Cows have excellent memories and remember how they are treated. Cows learn to associate people with positive or negative experiences. Skilled stock people understand cow behaviour and the importance of building trust, making handling easier and less stressful for both cows and people. This includes recognising flight zones and points of balance to move cattle calmly, using their natural following behaviour rather than forcing movement. Good stock people are patient, calm, and deliberate, giving cows time to process what's being asked of them. By noticing subtle behavioural cues that indicate stress, pain, or discomfort, good stock people can prevent problems before they escalate.
Positive welfare in practice
Look for opportunities on your farm to support positive welfare, while maintaining best practice to minimise negative experience through careful management, health prevention, and good animal care.
- Consider if your cows’ social, environmental and behavioural needs are being met, and where enhancements are possible.
- Think from the cow’s perspective – what might they enjoy or find stressful? What changes could create more positive experiences?
- Look for simple, cost-effective improvements that make a difference.
- Share ideas and learn from other farmers about how they provide positive experiences for their cows.
