Survey of animal welfare good practices in dairy farms in Argentina, using the CheqTambo application

Abstract

There is concern about Animal Welfare (AW) in production systems, so it is necessary that they work towards it. The Good Practices (GP) aim to improve productivity and profitability in a sustainable manner and one of their objectives is to achieve the AW, therefore, compliance with them represents an alternative to know the conditions in which animals are found in dairy farms. CheqTambo was developed in a public-private partnership, is on line for Android and the web, with free access, that facilitates the implementation of GP in six areas of the dairy process. This work shows GP compliance related to the AW of CheqTambo. for a group of dairy farms in Argentina. Thirteen GP from the AW area corresponding to 322 dairy farms in Argentina were surveyed with CheqTambo. The surveys were carried out by the producers or technical advisors of the dairy farms in the period May 2021 to September 2022, a database was created with 4186 responses. The AW area obtained the highest % of compliance (83%). Of the thirteen GP surveyed, eleven had compliance between 84 and 91%, while two GP had a lower % compliance, being "ventilation and sprinkler system" and "shade in the waiting pen" with values of 50 and 69%, respectively."Handling Conditions" obtained the highest value with 91% compliance. All of GP of AW are feasible for improvement, especially “Shade in the holding pen” and “ventilation and spraying”. CheqTambo is considered a suitable tool to start working on AW in dairy farms, to later deepen the work with specific tools.