On-farm welfare assessment systems- what are the recording costs
Publication Type: |
Journal Article |
Year of Publication: |
2007 |
Authors: |
J.T. Sørensen, T. Rousing, S.H. Møller, M. Bonde, L. Hegelund |
Publication/Journal: |
Animal Welfare |
Keywords: |
animal welfare, labour costs, on-farm welfare assessment systems, recordings |
Abstract:
To illustrate that different approaches lead to different costs a cost calculation on four different welfare assessment systems for four different animal species has been carried out; an integrated pig herd (450 sows), a dairy cattle herd with automatic milking (90 cows), an organic egg production system (3000 layers) and a mink farm (1000 mink). We calculated the cost to be: E 375 per annum for the mink farm and E 2205, E 2430 and E 2435 for the egg production system, the AMS dairy herd and the integrated pig farm, respectively. The costs can be reduced by: reducing the number of indicators and/or the recording frequency, reducing sample sizes, more intensive use of existing data and by exchanging external for internal recordings.