Improvement of the Welfare Quality scoring model for dairy cows to fit experts’ opinion
After several years of implementation, the original Welfare Quality scoring model for dairy cows appears to be highly sensitive to the number and cleanliness of drinkers and not enough to the prevalence of diseases, and as a consequence may not fit the opinion of some animal welfare experts. The pre...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Elsevier
2023-11-01
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| Series: | Animal |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S175173112300335X |
| _version_ | 1827714822198788096 |
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| author | R. Lardy R. Botreau A. de Boyer des Roches F.J.C.M. van Eerdenburg S. de Graaf M.J. Haskell M.K. Kirchner L. Mounier M Kjosevski F.A.M. Tuyttens I. Veissier |
| author_facet | R. Lardy R. Botreau A. de Boyer des Roches F.J.C.M. van Eerdenburg S. de Graaf M.J. Haskell M.K. Kirchner L. Mounier M Kjosevski F.A.M. Tuyttens I. Veissier |
| author_sort | R. Lardy |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | After several years of implementation, the original Welfare Quality scoring model for dairy cows appears to be highly sensitive to the number and cleanliness of drinkers and not enough to the prevalence of diseases, and as a consequence may not fit the opinion of some animal welfare experts. The present paper aims to improve the Welfare Quality calculations for the criteria ‘Absence of prolonged thirst’ and ‘Absence of disease’ in dairy cows, so that the results are more sensitive to input data and better fit experts’ opinion. First, we modified the calculation of ‘Absence of prolonged thirst’ by linearising the calculation for drinkers’ availability to avoid threshold effects. Second, we modified the calculation of ‘Absence of disease’ by applying a Choquet integral on the three lowest spline-based scores for each health disorder to limit compensation between health disorders. Third, we performed a global sensitivity analysis of the original and the alternative scoring models. Fourth, we compared the results obtained with the original and the alternative models with eight experts’ opinions on two subsets composed of 44 and 60 farms, respectively, inspected using the Welfare Quality protocol and on which experts gave their opinion on the overall level of animal welfare. Results show that the alternative model significantly reduced the ‘threshold effects’ related to the number of drinkers and the compensation between health disorders. On the first subset, the alternative model fits the experts’ opinion slightly better than the original model (P = 0.061). On the second subset, the models performed equally. In conclusion, the proposed refinements for calculating scores are validated since they significantly reduced ‘threshold effects’ and the influence of measures related to drinkers. It also reduced the compensation between health disorders by considering only the three lowest scores and thus increasing the influence of measures related to health disorders, and slightly improve at overall score level the accordance with experts’ opinion. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-10T19:04:55Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-33b97ceab22b48179bc9638714e62c35 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1751-7311 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-10T19:04:55Z |
| publishDate | 2023-11-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Animal |
| spelling | doaj.art-33b97ceab22b48179bc9638714e62c352023-11-20T04:11:33ZengElsevierAnimal1751-73112023-11-011711101018Improvement of the Welfare Quality scoring model for dairy cows to fit experts’ opinionR. Lardy0R. Botreau1A. de Boyer des Roches2F.J.C.M. van Eerdenburg3S. de Graaf4M.J. Haskell5M.K. Kirchner6L. Mounier7M Kjosevski8F.A.M. Tuyttens9I. Veissier10Université Clermont Auvergne, INRAE, VetAgro Sup, UMR Herbivores, 63122 Saint-Genès-Champanelle, France; Corresponding author.Université Clermont Auvergne, INRAE, VetAgro Sup, UMR Herbivores, 63122 Saint-Genès-Champanelle, FranceUniversité Clermont Auvergne, INRAE, VetAgro Sup, UMR Herbivores, 63122 Saint-Genès-Champanelle, FranceDepartment of Farm Animal Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, 3584 CL Utrecht, The NetherlandsFlanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO), Burgemeester van Gansberghelaan 92, 9820 Merelbeke, BelgiumSRUC, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JG, UKFOUR PAWS International, Linke Wienzeile 236, 1150 Vienna, AustriaUniversité Clermont Auvergne, INRAE, VetAgro Sup, UMR Herbivores, 63122 Saint-Genès-Champanelle, FranceAnimal Welfare Center, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Lazar Pop-Trajkov 5-7, 1000 Skopje, Republic of MacedoniaFlanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO), Burgemeester van Gansberghelaan 92, 9820 Merelbeke, Belgium; Department of Veterinary and Biosciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ghent University, Heidestraat 19, 9820 Merelbeke, BelgiumUniversité Clermont Auvergne, INRAE, VetAgro Sup, UMR Herbivores, 63122 Saint-Genès-Champanelle, FranceAfter several years of implementation, the original Welfare Quality scoring model for dairy cows appears to be highly sensitive to the number and cleanliness of drinkers and not enough to the prevalence of diseases, and as a consequence may not fit the opinion of some animal welfare experts. The present paper aims to improve the Welfare Quality calculations for the criteria ‘Absence of prolonged thirst’ and ‘Absence of disease’ in dairy cows, so that the results are more sensitive to input data and better fit experts’ opinion. First, we modified the calculation of ‘Absence of prolonged thirst’ by linearising the calculation for drinkers’ availability to avoid threshold effects. Second, we modified the calculation of ‘Absence of disease’ by applying a Choquet integral on the three lowest spline-based scores for each health disorder to limit compensation between health disorders. Third, we performed a global sensitivity analysis of the original and the alternative scoring models. Fourth, we compared the results obtained with the original and the alternative models with eight experts’ opinions on two subsets composed of 44 and 60 farms, respectively, inspected using the Welfare Quality protocol and on which experts gave their opinion on the overall level of animal welfare. Results show that the alternative model significantly reduced the ‘threshold effects’ related to the number of drinkers and the compensation between health disorders. On the first subset, the alternative model fits the experts’ opinion slightly better than the original model (P = 0.061). On the second subset, the models performed equally. In conclusion, the proposed refinements for calculating scores are validated since they significantly reduced ‘threshold effects’ and the influence of measures related to drinkers. It also reduced the compensation between health disorders by considering only the three lowest scores and thus increasing the influence of measures related to health disorders, and slightly improve at overall score level the accordance with experts’ opinion.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S175173112300335XAnimal well-beingCattleExpert opinionMulticriteria evaluationSensitivity analysis |
| spellingShingle | R. Lardy R. Botreau A. de Boyer des Roches F.J.C.M. van Eerdenburg S. de Graaf M.J. Haskell M.K. Kirchner L. Mounier M Kjosevski F.A.M. Tuyttens I. Veissier Improvement of the Welfare Quality scoring model for dairy cows to fit experts’ opinion Animal Animal well-being Cattle Expert opinion Multicriteria evaluation Sensitivity analysis |
| title | Improvement of the Welfare Quality scoring model for dairy cows to fit experts’ opinion |
| title_full | Improvement of the Welfare Quality scoring model for dairy cows to fit experts’ opinion |
| title_fullStr | Improvement of the Welfare Quality scoring model for dairy cows to fit experts’ opinion |
| title_full_unstemmed | Improvement of the Welfare Quality scoring model for dairy cows to fit experts’ opinion |
| title_short | Improvement of the Welfare Quality scoring model for dairy cows to fit experts’ opinion |
| title_sort | improvement of the welfare quality scoring model for dairy cows to fit experts opinion |
| topic | Animal well-being Cattle Expert opinion Multicriteria evaluation Sensitivity analysis |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S175173112300335X |
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