#farm #veterinarian #animal #welfare #III
The first two groups of indicators necessary for the analysis of the farm are described. – Article published in the March issue of Albéitar magazine.
Francisco Martínez
President of the Association of Sheep and Goat Veterinarians of Castilla y León
It is the obligation of the veterinarian in general and the farm veterinarian in particular to know the basic principles of animal welfare and the indicators that must be measured in order to guarantee it. Indicators that must not only be zootechnical, health and physiological, but must also be valid, reliable and feasible, on the one hand, and objective and practical, on the other. We must not forget that there is a critical relationship between health and well-being, and that improving well-being conditions increases production in the long term, although we must emphasize, as we have said on other occasions, that high production is not synonymous with well-being. .
Knowledge of the indicators necessary for the analysis of the farm will be necessary to see what actions are useful in it for the improvement of well-being and technical results, as well as knowing what recommendations can be made to improve the farm in general. To do this, we will make a brief overview of the main indicators that a farm veterinarian should know and that can be grouped into feeding, health, housing and behavioral indicators. In this article we begin with some small notes on the first two: nutrition and health.
Power indicators
Taking into account that many of the animal welfare indicators overlap with each other or have intersecting consequences, we will point out the most important ones in each of the groups. So regarding food:
- Body condition (CC). The nutritional status can be known through the body condition, whose evaluation allows corrections to be made in management and to increase the productive and reproductive efficiency of the sheep according to their physiological state.
- Stool consistency. Without going into pathological aspects, more pasty stools can be indicators of an incorrect diet.
- Access to food. It must be possible without competition, so the feeder space must be correct, whatever the feeding system used, since the animals must have access to adequate, healthy and hygienic food at suitable regular intervals, at least once. once a day or ad libitum.
- Access to water. Likewise, regardless of the type of drinkers, these must be sufficient so that there is no competition for the water and it must be clean and at an appropriate temperature.
It must be taken into account that not suffering from hunger or thirst corresponds to one of the five freedoms that define the state of well-being of animals.
Health indicators
When observing cattle, it must be remembered that symptoms of poor health encompass a multitude of noticeable symptoms such as apathy, loss of appetite, lack of rumination, discharge from the eyes, nose or mouth, excessive salivation, persistent cough, inflammation of the joints or other parts of the body, lameness, diarrhea, vaginal or rectal prolapse, and so on, a long etcetera.
Therefore, we must keep the animals free of wounds, since an injured animal cannot have adequate well-being, regardless of its origin, including especially mammary lesions and lameness. In the same way, an adequate mucous color is a fairly reliable indicator of adequate health that will reflect good fleece quality.
This article appears in issue 265 (March/April 2024) of Albéitar. Subscribe here to have full access to this and other magazine content.
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