A comparison of three animal welfare assessment protocols applied to Swedish dairy cow herds

Figures & data

Table 1. Comparison of the Official Control (OC), Ask the Cow (AC) and Welfare Quality (WC) protocols in terms of animal-based, management-based and resource-based measures included in assessments on farms with dairy cows.

Category	Parameter	OC^1	AC	WQ^2
Animal-based	Body condition	Yes	Yes*	Yes
	Cleanliness	Yes	Yes*	Yes
	Hooves	Yes	Yes	No
	Hairless patches, and lesions/swellings	No	Yes*	Yes
	Lameness	No	Yes	Yes
	Standing/lying in the stall	No	Yes	No
	Rising behaviour	No	Yes	No
	Lying behaviour	No	No	Yes
	Behaviour	No	To a low extent	Yes
	Vermin, parasites	No	Yes*	Yes
	Health	Partly	Yes*	Yes
	Competition at the feeding table	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Calves, young stock	Yes	Yes*	No
	Avoidance distance	No	No	Yes
Management-based	Competent personnel	Yes	No	No
	Daily observations	Yes	No	No
	Daily/yearly cleaning	Yes	No	No
Resource-based	Water access and hygiene	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Space requirements	Yes	No	No
	The stall interior and floor	Yes	Indirect	Indirect
	Air quality	Yes	No	No
	Day light	Yes	No	No
	Bedding material	Yes	No	No
	Noise	Yes	No	No

¹ All questions in the OC checklist are answered ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘Not checked’ or ‘Not applicable’, and relate to all animals on the farm.

² Assessment is done on 35 cows, and in some cases (*) on 35 young stock and 35 calves in addition.

³ Number of animals is 30–73, depending on the size of the herd.

Table 2. Assessors (A–Y) applying the official control (OC), Ask the Cow (AC) and the Welfare Quality (WQ) protocols on the 41 participating dairy farms (1–41). Number of farms assessed by each assessor is given in brackets.

Assessment protocol	Farm 1–10	Farm 11–20	Farm 21–31	Farm 32–41
OC	A(5), B(2), C(1), D(1), E(1)	F(10)	G(9), H(2)	I(7), J(3)
AC	K(10),	L(10)	M(11)	N(4), O(4), P(2)
WQ	Q(5), R(5)	S(10) + T(4)^1	U(11) + V(11)^1	X(10) + Y(2)^1

¹ The assessments were made in collaboration.

Figure 1. Correlation between (A) number of remarks in the Official Control (OC) and ranking of the 41 dairy farms using the ‘Ask the Cow’ (AC) protocol (r = 0.40, P = 0.009, y = 2952x + 16,796), (B) number of remarks in OC and ranking using the Welfare Quality (WQ) protocol (P > 0.05) and (C) the AC and WQ rankings. Correlations based on 41 farms, except for WQ (n = 38 farms).

Table 3. Number of negative remarks made about the 41 dairy farms in the Official Control (OC) and farm ranking according to the Ask the Cow (AC) and Welfare Quality (WQ) protocols. There are three missing values for WQ, two since avoidance distance not could be assessed on two farms and one due to missing values, so the total value could not be calculated.

Remarks in OC	Rank AC	Rank WQ
0	1	16
0	6	35
0	8	23
0	9	17
0	11	29
0	12	21
0	13	3
0	17
0	17	6
0	19	14
0	23	18
0	24	20
0	26	12
0	28	36
0	30	33
0	32	8
0	33	1
0	36
1	1	7
1	5	25
1	7	13
1	15	2
1	16	38
1	19	28
1	25	31
1	29	4
1	34	15
2	3	10
2	3	9
2	9	30
2	14	34
2	31	11
2	41	32
3	19	22
3	27	5
4	19	27
4	40	26
5	35	19
5	37
5	38	24
5	39	37

Figure 2. Proportion of lean cows (A) and fat cows (B) per herd in the Ask the Cow (AC) assessment (red bars) and Welfare Quality (WQ) assessment (blue bars). Farm number 1–41 is not related to the ranking.

Figure 3. Proportion of (A) dirty cows (blue bars) and severely dirty cows (red bars) per herd in the Ask the Cow (AC) assessment and (B) proportion of cows per herd with dirty legs (blue bars), dirty udder (red bars) and dirty hindquarters (green bars) in the Welfare Quality (WQ) assessment. Farms that received negative remarks in Official Control (OC) are indicated with yellow arrows. Farm number 1–41 is not related to the ranking.

Figure 4. Proportion of cows with skin lesions in the Welfare Quality (WQ) assessment (blue bars) and Ask the Cow (AC) assessment (red bars = skin lesions, green bars = severe skin lesions). Farm number 1–41 is not related to the ranking.