How does it work?
- Participating farms will be visited by AFBI staff several times with approximately 3 months between visits. Most farms will be visited 4 times to get information reflecting all seasons. In some cases (for instance when a farm switches to a new milking system) more visits will be made. Note that as the number of visits to a farm increases, so does the total compensation (£100 per visit). Also, the information on the farms’ strengths and weaknesses becomes more reliable.
- During these visits, AFBI staff will perform a full assessment of cow welfare and collect data on productivity and labour patterns that are provided by the farms.
- All collected data is treated confidentially: it will be anonymized for reports and publication (that is, the results of your farm would be displayed but no one except you will know which results belong to your farm).
- A visit is expected to last roughly 5 hours, but this doesn’t mean that you have to be with the AFBI staff all the time unless you want to, as a large part of their time is devoted to assessing the cows.
- Cow assessment includes scoring body condition, lameness, skin injuries, disease symptoms and cleanliness of the cow, as well as studying how cows lie down, interact with each other, and respond to being approached by a person. Furthermore, access to pasture and sufficient clean drinking water is scored.
- Some of these assessments are carried out in the days after the visit, using videos recorded on the farm. Once this assessment is carried out the videos will be deleted immediately and they will not be shared with anyone.
- Cows will always be treated calmly, minimizing any chance of disturbance. Assessment of lameness does require that cows are calmly stimulated to take several steps, but other than that all assessments are visual and do not require handling of the cows.
- A short questionnaire about your farm management will be included in each visit – within this, somatic cell counts, milk yields and herd data such as calving and dry off dates are collected. This information can also be sent via email at a later date if you prefer that.
- You will be asked to record how much time you spend on 8 main types of activities (for instance: direct cow care, reviewing cow records, care of youngstock, milking) for three days per month.
What information will you receive from AFBI afterwards?
You will receive a full report detailing the data that was collected on your farm.
The information on how welfare, labour and productivity are developing on you farm will enable you to make informed management decisions.
You will also get insight into the scores of the other participating farms, allowing you to compare your farm against your peers’ farms.
However, note that you will not know which result belongs to which of the other farms (nor will they know your identity).
More info
To learn more about the project, or to sign up to participate, please contact Laura McAnally at AFBI Hillsborough:
- email: laura.mcanally@afbini.gov.uk
- phone: 028 9268 1573
