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Animal-related indicators to optimize animal health and animal welfare in dairy goats - 'Stable Schools' as an innovative counseling concept in dairy goat farming

Project


Project code: 2813MDT010, TI-OL-08-PID1512
Contract period: 01.09.2014 - 31.12.2017
Budget: 292,292 Euro
Purpose of research: Demonstration

Dairy goat farming is a growing business in Germany since more then one decade. In the same manner, there is a growing demand on extension for dairy goat farms regarding husbandry and management. Although there is some knowledge present, there is a lack of transer into practical dairy goat farming. That is the starting point for our new initiative Stable Schools for dairy farmers. A stable school group consists of 5 farmers each. In our project 7 stable school groups will be established all over Germany. Extension offeicers will provide assistance for the stable groups. They will facilitate the group formation, talks and processes, but they will not act as promoters. Three times during the projetc period welfare assessments r4egarding health, hosuing and mangament will be conducted on all participating farms. The results will be input for the stable school group extension as well as benchmark criteria for a successful extension process. The extension initiative Stable Schools will be wide spread in media and goat farming associations. A maximum of 35 farms will be selected from the total number of applicants. The institute of Organic Farming will conduct welfare assessment on all selected farms to determine state of the art at the beginning of the project. Welfare assessment will be repeated half-time and at the end of the project. The assessment can be used as input for stable school groups and is a measure for the definition of dairy goat welfare.

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