On-farm welfare assessment in dairy cattle and buffaloes: evaluation of some animal-based parameters

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the repeatability of some animal related variables, which could be used in proto-  cols developed for assessing animal welfare at farm level. Recordings were performed in seven dairy farms (four for cat-  tle and three for buffaloes). The animals were observed on three occasions at three-week intervals. The variables col-  lected for each animal were the following: behaviour during milking (stepping and kicking), avoidance distance, lame-  ness and cleanliness. For each farm and each variable repeatability was computed using the Kendall coefficient of con-  cordance (W). In buffalo farms avoidance distance may be considered highly reliable (W > 0.64), whereas in dairy cat-  tle its reliability ranged from medium (W = 0.43 to 0.59) to high (W = 0.64). Behavioural recordings at milking showed  that the reliability of stepping was either medium or high for both buffaloes and cattle (W = 0.51 to 0.66 and W = 0.52  to 0.76 for buffaloes and cattle, respectively). Conversely, kicking was less reliable. In cattle farms the reliability for  cleanliness ranged from medium (W = 0.51) to high (W = 0.62 to 0.71), whereas, it was not reliable in the sole buffalo  farm where this variable was monitored. In cattle farms, the concordance for lameness score was high in two farms (W  = 0.62 and 0.66) and moderate in one farm (W = 0.43), whereas no animals displayed lameness in the fourth farm. In  all buffalo farms no animals showed lameness. For each species, the Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance with one factor  (farm) was performed to evaluate the effect of farm on recorded variables. For cattle, avoidance distance (P  stepping (P  nificantly different between farms. In buffaloes a significant effect of farm was observed only for avoidance distance  (P  that avoidance distance was lower in buffaloes than cattle (P  criminate among farms. Lameness and cleanliness scores were able to discriminate only cattle farms, whereas these two  parameters, albeit feasible, seem to have low significance for buffaloes. Although stepping during milking was reliable  and different among cattle farms, its use in on-farm assessment may be difficult because it is more time consuming, thus  less feasible. 

Keywords

• Dairy cattle, Buffalo, On-farm assessment, Behaviour, Reliability