The evaluation of 18 indicator groups, comprising 43 individual indicators, is incorporated into these three sub-areas. The assessment is conducted online via the shared technical platform www.farmlife.at. While highly practical in its application, this assessment system focuses on the animal, but the results are also intended to allow conclusions to be drawn about influencing factors and provide farmers with recommendations for improving any shortcomings in husbandry or management.
Over the past two years, the FarmLife Welfare Tool has been applied to a number of Austrian dairy farms as part of two projects. The practical application of this online tool across a total of 375 farm surveys yielded overall index values ranging from 46 to 97 points, demonstrating that management practices significantly influence farm performance, regardless of the housing system. This suggests that animal welfare, or rather the potential for improved animal welfare, can only be adequately assessed on farms by considering management factors and incorporating animal-related indicators.
The FarmLife Welfare Index achieves its flexibility through the broad parameterization of its individual indicators. Its robustness arises from a balanced arrangement of indicator groups across the three sub-areas. Testing the robustness of the FarmLife Welfare Index was part of this work, and this important property was confirmed.
While the FarmLife Welfare Index for dairy farming is already widely used in practice, this tool was not previously available for calf and beef cattle farming. Therefore, this project developed a new set of indicators for FarmLife Welfare assessment in calf and beef cattle farming. Initial applications of the animal-related indicators for calves on farms allowed for conclusions to be drawn about the indicators' practicality. Further evaluation and testing of these new indicators on farms is recommended.
