Cow mortality as an indicator of animal welfare in dairy herds

Abstract

Welfare assessments based on herd visits are time consuming - and thus costly - and only measure welfare at specific points in time. This makes the use of routinely recorded indicators of animal welfare interesting. Such an indicator must - among other things - meet the following requirements: 1) the indicator must have a well-documented association with animal welfare and 2) data on the indicator must be easily available. Focussing on these two requirements, the objective of this paper was to evaluate the possibility of using routinely recorded cow mortality data as an indicator of animal welfare in dairy cattle herds. A literature review identified 10 articles describing varying degrees of associations between cow mortality and animal welfare in dairy herds. According to EU legislation, information about cow mortality should be routinely available in all EU member states. However, to what degree this is in fact the case, and how easily available the data are, remains to be elucidated further. In conclusion, most studies found at least some association between cow mortality and animal welfare. Therefore, the use of routinely collected data on cow mortality as an indicator of animal welfare in dairy herds may be relevant, but further research is needed to document 1) the association between cow mortality and animal welfare and 2) the availability of routinely collected cow mortality data.