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Long-term effects of mother-bonded rearing on female calves in organic dairy farming
Project
Project code: 2811OE072
Contract period: 16.11.2011
- 15.11.2013
Budget: 63,756 Euro
Purpose of research: Applied research
Consumers often come up with animal welfare as one reason to buy organic food. Especially, organic dairy farming is seen as a natural way to keep animals but some keeping practices in organic farming are questioned. Cow-calf-separation within 24 hours p.p. is one of them. Studies comparing artificial with motherbonded calf rearing have shown that suckling calves do not show behavioural abnormities such as cross sucking. However, previous studies often focused the suckling period but information about long-term effects are still scarce. Thus, this project aims to investigate the social behaviour of pregnant heifers - reared either motherbonded or artificial - during the process of integration in a herd of dairy cows, to monitor these heifers during their first lactation and to evaluate the motherbonded rearing system with regard to its practicability under farming conditions. 20 heifers, (12 suckled by their mother and 8 artificial reared with an automatic milk feeder over the first 3 months) kept together under the same management conditions, will be integrated separately into the herd 3 to 4 weeks before calving. Each animal will be observed directly over 12 hours. Social behaviour and nearest neighbour will be recorded by continuous and scan sampling, respectively. At day 8 after integration, the observation will be repeated over a shorter period. Accelerometers will be used to record activity profiles over at least 10 days to reveal the time animals need to adapt to the new conditions. Cortisol metabolites in faeces indicate stress and faecal samples will the taken before and at day 1, 3 and 7 after the integration. To investigate the long term effects of the rearing system on lactating cows, the 20 animals will be observed again in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd lactation third, and health as well as performance data will be collected monthly over the whole first lactation.
Section overview
Subjects
- Animal Husbandry
- Organic Farming
- Farm animal behaviour
Framework programme
Federal Organic Farming Scheme and other forms of sustainable agriculture (BÖLN)
