Small ruminant welfare: Levelling the playing field or raising the bar—A European perspective

Abstract

There is a diversity of small ruminant production systems across Europe, which range from extensive upland and mountain systems with a low stocking rate and sometimes minimal supervision to more intensive and/or housed systems, for example for milk production from sheep and goats. This diversity, more prevalent than for other livestock species, leads to difficulties in evaluating the welfare of the individual animals concerned (because the experiences of animals are so different) with a related difficulty in creating common criteria for evaluating welfare across Europe as a whole, and in individual countries. Nevertheless, even without a valid, transparent and agreed basis for the evaluation of individual enterprises, it is still possible for livestock advisers and veterinarians, in collaboration with producers, to be proactive and to recommend on-farm measures, which could raise the general standard of care and, importantly, to have a major impact on the welfare of individual animals in these systems.