Stoeien En Knuffelen Als Graadmeter Voor Koe-Welzijn

Abstract

Currently, intensive farming gets much attention, partly because of the growing criticism by consumers in the bio industry. This stimulates the development of welfare systems. The Welfare Quality ® system, developed in 2009 by parties from different countries of the European Union, is a good example that behaviour can be used as a parameter in a scoring system. However, in most cases only agonistic behavior is used. By developing an ethogram of tactile communication and recording how often these behaviors are shown in a most natural flock (Jansen, 2011), may be a step forward towards future implementation of behavior in the welfare scoring system of Eerdenburg et al (unpublished), abbreviated as WSS. Until this implementation, the observations are used in the WSS as it currently exists for validation purposes. This was done by comparing both affiliative and agonistic behavior of the cows with the scores for each element of the WSS. In this study several different areas were used: ‘pasture’, ‘waiting parlour’ and ‘exit parlour’. However, no connection has been found between WSS and the different areas, but there is a positive correlation between surface and behaviour.