The Pros And Cons Of Animal Welfare

Animal welfare is a serious aspect to consider in relation to different farming facilities. Animal welfare is defined as the well-being of animals. This is a controversial topic, which is due to the nature of the definition of "good" and "bad" and morality with respect to animals. Farmers attempt to balance the welfare of animals along with trying to maximize the productivity of the farm as well. There are four main aspects to animal welfare: good feeding, good housing, good health and appropriate species-specific behavior performed by the animals. Each principle has criteria within themselves, in further specification. Various farming facilities provide different benefits and cons to the welfare of animals. To begin, the housing faculty that

The red farm has 4 groups of 50 calves, whilst the blue farm has 6 groups of 40 calves. The benefit of having multiple calves per group is the social interactions between the calves. Socialization is a factor that can relieve stress from animals, which would improve their welfare. However, there is also a drawback to having many calves per group. The two most important drawbacks to having multiple calves per group is competition and aggression being shown by the calves. Competition invokes aggression and if an aggressive behavior is exhibited by another calf, the other calves are limited to the space they can retreat to, thereby decreasing welfare. Contrastingly, the blue farm has 6.67 calves per group, this will mean that the calves would have a much broader space to move around in. With the increase in space, the calves will be able to alleviate stress easier than the red farm and this, in turn, causes less aggression between the calves. Furthermore, the calves that are less than or equal to 8 weeks old have the benefit of individual housing, with about 1.2m2 per calf on the red farm. This is in contrast to the blue farm, where calves are all grouped into one

The red farm and blue farm differ in their feeding protocols. Good feeding is based on two criteria: availability of food and the availability of water. The red farm has some of their animals individually fed and others fed in a group setting. This is in contrast to the blue farm, where their calves are always fed in a group, with 40 animals per device. The welfare of the animals decreases on the blue farm as there would be aggressive behaviors between the calves compared to the red farm. The red farm also only feeds their calves twice a day, whilst the blue farm feeds their calves three times a day. Generally, the more food there is available, the better it is for the welfare of the animals. It is reported that calves with better nutritional feeding produce, on average, a 2-3% increase in milk yield (Rushen et al. 2008). This implies that as the welfare of the animal increases, so does their productivity. This can also be misleading, as extra milk produced can cause more stress on the animal and can increase the susceptibility of the calve to diseases (Rushen et al. 2008). However, the calves on the red farm have access to water whenever needed, whilst the blue farm gives access to water 6-12 hours a day. The blue farm decreases the animals' welfare because if calve is thirsty before/after the 6-12-hour period, they will remain in discomfort. With the lack of availability of water, the red