Abstract
Simple SummaryMany protocols have been developed to assess farm animal welfare. However, the validity of these protocols is still subject to debate. The present study aimed to compare eight welfare assessment protocols. Chronic stress has a negative impact on animal welfare and causes an increase in cortisol, which can be objectively measured in hair. Hair cortisol concentration has been suggested as reflecting the stress level over a long period of time. Correlation coefficients were calculated between each of the welfare assessment protocol scores and mean hair cortisol concentrations from 10 cows from 58 dairy farms spread over the Netherlands. We expected a negative correlation between cortisol and the result of the welfare protocol scores. However, most protocols or components were uncorrelated with hair cortisol and we did not find evidence supporting our hypothesis. This suggests that the protocols might not yield valid indices for cow welfare, or alternatively, that hair cortisol levels may not provide a long term indicator for stress in dairy cattle.Many protocols have been developed to assess farm animal welfare. However, the validity of these protocols is still subject to debate. The present study aimed to compare nine welfare assessment protocols, namely: (1) Welfare Quality© (WQ), (2) a modified version of Welfare Quality (WQ Mod), which has a better discriminative power, (3) WelzijnsWijzer (Welfare Indicator; WW), (4) a new Welfare Monitor (WM), (5) Continue Welzijns Monitor (Continuous Welfare Monitor; CWM), (6) KoeKompas (Cow Compass; KK), (7) Cow Comfort Scoring System (CCSS), (8) Stall Standing Index (SSI) and (9) a Welfare Index (WI Tuyttens). In addition, a simple welfare estimation by veterinarians (Estimate vets, EV) was added. Rank correlation coefficients were calculated between each of the welfare assessment protocol scores and mean hair cortisol concentrations from 10 cows at 58 dairy farms spread over the Netherlands. Because it has been suggested that the hair cortisol level is related to stress, experienced over a long period of time, we expected a negative correlation between cortisol and the result of the welfare protocol scores. Only the simple welfare estimation by veterinarians (EV) (ρ = −0.28) had a poor, but significant, negative correlation with hair cortisol. This correlations, however, failed to reach significance after correction of p-values for multiple correlations. Most of the results of the different welfare assessment protocols had a poor, fair or strong positive correlation with each other, supporting the notion that they measure something similar. Additional analyses revealed that the modified Welfare Quality protocol parameters housing (ρ = −0.30), the new Welfare Monitor (WM) parameter health (ρ = −0.33), and milk yield (ρ = −0.33) showed negative correlations with cortisol. We conclude that because only five out of all the parameter scores from the welfare assessment protocols showed a negative, albeit weak, correlation with cortisol, hair cortisol levels may not provide a long term indicator for stress in dairy cattle, or alternatively, that the protocols might not yield valid indices for cow welfare.
Highlights
There is no specific EU directive for dairy cows, a recent report by the EU Parliament’s Directorate-General for Internal Policies stated that “dairy cow welfare may be considered to be the second greatest animal welfare problem in the EU” [1,2]
Hair cortisol concentrations for the entire experiment ranged from 3.93–127.42 pg/mg hair, mean and standard deviation were respectively 20.50 pg/mg and 0.775 for n = 548 cows
Samples measured in the second run, 12 months after the first run, had significantly lower cortisol levels compared to samples measured at the first time point (F1,14 = 7.92; p = 0.0138; Figure 2, panel A)
Summary
There is no specific EU directive for dairy cows, a recent report by the EU Parliament’s Directorate-General for Internal Policies stated that “dairy cow welfare may be considered to be the second greatest animal welfare problem in the EU” [1,2]. Van Eerdenburg et al modified WQ to increase the discriminative capacity (WQ-Mod) [11] In this same study, WQ and WQ-Mod were correlated with other Dutch welfare assessment protocols for dairy cattle; KoeKompas (=Cow Compass) (KK), WelzijnsWijzer (= Welfare Indicator) (WW) and Continue Welzijns Monitor (=Continuous Welfare Monitor) (CWM) (See Tables 1 and 2). CWM is a monitor based solely on readily available recorded data about a farm, such as the number of deaths, and includes economic features like milk yield [14]. In addition to these protocols, the present study includes the Cow Comfort Scoring System (CCSS), that is mainly based on environmental parameters [15]. It should be noted that, many measurements within these protocols are similar, the interpretation and weight for the final scores differ substantially between the assessment protocols
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