In modern dairy production, calf rearing with early separation from the mother is one of the practices that is not beneficial for animal welfare and also most strongly questioned by consumers. There are different strategies for allowing cow-calf contact, which have possible benefits but also challenges. The aim of WP1 is to gain knowledge and describe existing strategies, to explore farmers’ motivators and barriers for using systems that allow mother-infant contact, to compare current legislation regarding calf rearing between countries and to evaluate the economic consequences of using different calf rearing strategies.

Contact

Dr. Karin Alvåsen and Prof. Dr. Nils Fall, SLU, Work package leaders