A concept to promote animal welfare friendly calf rearing by foster cows on large dairy cow farms (KalbAmmWohl)

Animal welfare-friendly husbandry conditions are increasingly demanded in a broad social consensus.

Many people are not aware of the practice of separating dairy calves from their mothers, usually within the

first few hours after birth. When informed of this, a majority rejects this practice. Various reasons, such as

calf morbidity, workload and last but not least the well-being of the animals, are causing an increasing

number of farm managers to practice cow-calf contact during rearing. However, cow-calf contact also poses

some challenges and must be adapted to the respective operating conditions. Especially for very large

farms it can be spatially and logistically difficult to raise calves by their mothers and milk the cows at the

same time. Foster rearing, where the nurse cows are not additionally milked during the suckling phase, can

be a solution. However, the risks of rearing in foster care are an uneven milk supply to the calves, as well

as increased strain on the udder of the cows. In order to promote rearing systems with cow-calf contact

more widely in agricultural practice, it is necessary to find field-proven solutions to common problem areas.

Certain components or the overall concept can then be adopted and further developed by further

commercial farms. Considering increasing farm sizes in dairy cow husbandry, in particular for large herds

only few field-tested concepts are currently available. The planned project therefore aims to develop a

concept specifically for foster-related calf rearing on a large dairy farm, which ensures a high level of wellbeing

and health, and that provides a basis for recommendations also for further farms.