Original Scientific Article
Screening of selected indicators of dairy cattle welfare in Macedonia
Miroslav Radeski
*
,
Aleksandar Janevski
,
Vlatko Ilieski
Received: 18 July 2014
Received in revised form: 15 October 2014
Accepted: 10 November 2014
Available Online First: 19 November 2014
Published on: 15 March 2015
Correspondence: Miroslav Radeski,
Abstract
The welfare state of cattle in dairy farms in Macedonia has never been assessed previously. The objective of this study was to perform screening analysis of dairy cows welfare and to test the practical implementation of the Welfare Quality® Assessment protocol for cattle in dairy farms in Macedonia. In ten small scale and large scale tie stall farms 23 measures were recorded related to 9 welfare criteria of 4 welfare principles (WP) described in the Welfare Quality® Assessment protocol for dairy cows. The mean percentage of very lean cows was 40.5±9.1%. All assessed farms were not providing access to pasture and an outdoor loafing area. Regarding cleanliness, the presence of dirty udder, upper leg/flank and lower leg was 65.2±9.0%, 85.5±8.0% and 86.5±5.8%, respectively. The overall prevalence of lameness was 5.6±5.0%, and for mild and severe alterations it was 30.8±5.8% and 54.1±4.6%, respectively. The ocular and vulvar discharge, diarrhea, dystocia, percentage of downer cows and mortality rate exceeded the warning and alarm threshold. The avoidance – distance test classified 70.4±6.8% as animals that can be touched or approached closer than 50cm, with overall score of 42.9±3.5. This screening reveals that the most welfare concerns are found in the WP Good Feeding and Good Housing. The on-farm welfare assessment using the full protocol on a representative sample of farms in the country is highly recommended for emphasizing the key points for improving the animal welfare in Macedonian dairy farms.
Keywords: welfare assessment, cattle, dairy farms, animal based measures
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Copyright
© 2015 Radeski M. This is an open-access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declared that they have no potential conflict of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.
Citation Information
Macedonian Veterinary Review. Volume 38, Issue 1, Pages 53-51, p-ISSN 1409-7621, e-ISSN 1857-7415, DOI: 10.14432/j.macvetrev.2014.11.031, 2015
10.14432/j.macvetrev.2014.11.031
