Relationship between Management Practices and Calf Welfare in Mid-Country Dairy Farms in Sri Lanka

There is an emerging trend towards appreciating welfare of farm animals in Sri Lanka. A survey was conducted covering 182 farms in Mid-Country, Sri Lanka to identify management-related risk factors that may affect welfare of dairy calves. A total of 217 calves were monitored where majority were Jersey (54.4%) and Friesian (43.9%) crosses. The management-related risk factors identified include, not practicing naval disinfection for new-borns (100%), not using calving pens (100%), absence of calf pen (96.2%), dam-fed colostrum (99.5%), high mortality (28.0%),


ABSTRACT
There is an emerging trend towards appreciating welfare of farm animals in Sri Lanka. A survey was conducted covering 182 farms in Mid-Country, Sri Lanka to identify management-related risk factors that may affect welfare of dairy calves. A total of 217 calves were monitored where majority were Jersey (54.4%) and Friesian (43.9%) crosses. The management-related risk factors identified include, not practicing naval disinfection for new-borns (100%), not using calving pens (100%), absence of calf pen (96.2%), dam-fed colostrum (99.5%), high mortality (28.0%), high prevalence of hock wounds (83.4%) and diseases (80.2%). Concrete/cement was the prominent flooring category (90.1%) which causes unfriendly footing as indicated by hoof damageable (45.6%), slippery (75.8%), and unclean (40.7%) floor conditions. The hoof damageable floors considerably increased hoof temperature (P<0.05) whereas slippery and dirty floors positively (P<0.05) contributed to the prevalence and severity of hock wounds by 31.1% and 17.2%, respectively. Attitude of stockperson varied with the age where youths (19-30 years) concerned more about proper access to concentrate (61.0%), immediate calf-dam separation (20.2%) and proper age of weaning (58.4%) than adults (31-65 years) and seniors (>65 years). Welfare of male calves was satisfied with appropriate weaning age (3.8+1.4 months), concentrate supplement (0.55+0.25 kg), attending to health problems (96.5%) and selling after six months of age (89.6%). However, both female and male calves were underweight for their corresponding age. The findings emphasized that increasing the awareness on appropriate calf management practices is needed for achieving better results in raising calves into well-grown cattle.

INTRODUCTION
The knowledge of the relationship between calf management practices and welfare is crucial for raising a new-born calf to a productive dairy cow. Quality of calf rearing impinges on welfare of calves. Poor management practices contribute to risk conditions such as vulnerability to diseases, failing to gain weight, mortality and loss of production (Weary, 2001).
Animal welfare is widely recognized as an essential component of the social pillar of sustainability in the dairy industry (Keyserlingk et al., 2009). Some of the most decisive areas of the welfare of dairy calves include the routine practices of care of newborn calf, the fate of male calves, time of cowcalf separation, when and how food and water is provided, housing facilities for calves, paininflicting procedures, (Flower & Weary 2001). Appreciation of those routine management and welfare practices of dairy calves remains in very low level in Sri Lanka (Bandara et al., 2015). Prior to any intervention in increasing awareness of farmers on these aspects, as the initial step, the present situation of such practices need to be identified. In the current study, dairy cattle farms in Mid-Country, Sri Lanka was surveyed to assess information regarding calf rearing practices that could hinder dairy calf welfare.

METHODOLOGY Selection and description of Herds
The survey was conducted in 182 dairy farms (4.5+2.7 herd size and 10.7 + 4.7 L/ day/ farm) distributed in Mid-Country, Sri Lanka to gather information on calf management practices and welfare issues. Farms were randomly selected and a total of 217 claves were observed. The cows were kept in tie-stall housing system which is the type of housing used by 95% of dairy farms in Mid-Country, Sri Lanka (DAPH, 2009). The questionnaire was pre-and time-tested before administered and the information was gathered with face to face interview with the farmer and recording necessary qualitative measurements on cow-based and shed based parameters.

Collection and description of Data
The questionnaire consists of nine categories of management practices such as calving management and care of new-born, colostrum feeding, calf-dam separation, painful procedures, calf feeding, weaning, housing management, calf health management and calf handling.
Close-and open-ended questions were included in the questionnaire. The rating scale (for example, 1-Bad, 2-Good and 3 -Better cleanness of calf) and grouping (for example, youth (18-30 years), adult (31-65 years), senior (>65 years) were followed to ensure the homogeneity of data reduce the subjectivity.
All four legs of 217 calves were captured using FLIR T420 Infrared Thermography (IRT) camera to evaluate hock wounds using high temperature generated by wounds. These thermal images were analyzed to calculate the number of wounds, the temperature of wounds, average hoof temperature and average skin temperature.

Assessing of Welfare Attitude of Farmers
Welfare attitudes of each farmer were evaluated using a scoring based system (Table  1), for both farm and farmer based characters.

Statistical Analysis
Individual questionnaires were observed carefully to remove outliers and statistical analysis was conducted using SPSS 23.0 version. Descriptive statistics were calculated to describe farm characteristics and calf management practices. Thermal images were analysed in FLIR tools+® software and white colour areas which indicated higher temperature than other areas were considered as a wound. Number of wounds per cow was grouped into four categories according to its severity (1 -No wound (0 wound), 2 -Less wounded (0-3 wounds), 3 -More wounded (3-10 wounds), 4 -Severely wounded (>10 wounds)).
Relationship between farm characteristic and management practices with welfare issues of calves were statistically identified using Crosstabs/ Fisher's exact test, Mann-Whitney U-test and Correlation by Pearson/Spearman rank coefficient. If a farmer secured positive (+) points of more than or equal to eight, the particular farmer was ranked as a farmer with positive welfare attitudes.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Calving management and care of new-born calf
Jersey crosses were the most prominent (50.7%) category of cattle followed by Friesian (47.9%) and Ayrshire (1.4%) crosses in Mid-Country area. Separate calving pens are essential in cattle management in order to ensure hygiene, comfort and minimize the stress of dam and new-born during calving (Svensson et al., 2003). Provision of calving pens and naval disinfections after birth were not practised by any of the farmers surveyed. Evidence in the literature have proved that calving with a group setting increased risk of the calf being suffering from diarrhoea (Frank and Kaneene, 1993), respiratory problems (Svensson et al., 2003), and the risk of Salmonella infections (Losinger et al., 1995). According to Vasseur et al. (2010), sick cows in calving area were a source of disease for the new-born. Nevertheless, after the birth, the calf is at risk of getting infections through naval, nostrils and mouth from calving environment (Mee, 2013). Thus, keep a close attention on new-borns is a critical aspect in calf management. Although technological monitoring system was not applied for calving area observations in the present study, the information gathered confirmed that farmers visited cows only two times, once each during day and night. The night visit was paid for cows who were expected to calve. Therefore, lack of calving pens and naval disinfection were a significant welfare risk for both cow and calf.

Colostrum management
From a welfare perspective, colostrum is considered an essential to develop normal physiological and natural behaviour of calf's life (Stull and Reynolds, 2008) as colostrum consists of immunoglobulin, nutrients, cytokines and growth factors (Conneely, 2013) that are most important for calf health and survival (Godden, 2008). Optimum absorption of immunoglobulin occurs within four hours after birth (Weaver et al., 2000) and factors such as method and volume of colostrum feeding, immunoglobulin concentration (Charlton, 2009), and age of dam also effect on absorption. The survey results depicted that, 97.3% of farmers fed their calves within one hour of birth, and others (2.3%) within two hours of birth. Although the timing of first colostrum was satisfied, leaving calves with the dam to nurse colostrum (99.5%) was a major issue since the required quality and quantity of colostrum is difficult to measure. The study by Beam et al., (2009) demonstrated that failure of passive transfer of immunity was high through inadequate quantity of colostrums. Pooled colostrum or mixing together colostrum from various sources which was not recommended due to increase opportunities for bacterial contaminations (Weaver et al., 2000) was practised only in one farm in the area.

Calf-Dam separation
Immediate calf-dam separation within short period of birth is recommended to reduce the stress due to cow-calf bond (Weary and Chua 2000), for better supervision of colostrum (Flower and Weary, 2001), to decrease risk of exposure to environmental pathogens and disease transfer (Windsor and Whittington, 2010) and for better income (Marcé et al., 2011). According to the current study, delayed separation time (> 24 hours from birth) was the most common practice among farmers (93.0%) whereas 2.7% of farmers practiced the separation before 24hrs and only two farmers separate calves within two hours. However, the least stressful routine practice for both cow and calf is the important factor for which immediate separation would be a solution, but least practiced in Mid-Country, Sri Lanka. On the other hand, the European Food Safety Authority (2006) identified separation of calf from the dam as a main risk for calf welfare because of the lack of maternal care.
Late separation is generally recommended due to benefits such as improving natural behaviour with emotional benefits for both dam and calf (Marcé et al., 2011;Daros et al., 2014), better weight gain, improving udder and uterine health (Flower and Weary, 2001) of cows.

Painful procedures
For identification of calves, all farmers used ear tags but practiced only for female calves with the help of a veterinary surgeon. No particular age for ear tagging was followed by farmers, but commonly done within the age of 2-4 months. According to Quigley et al., (1996), practicing an identification method as early as possible is important from the point of view of new-born caring and individual follow up. Painful procedures such as disbudding, dehorning, teat removal and castration were not regularly carried out in the surveyed area. Only one farmer in the current study found practicing disbudding of calves at the age of two months by the farmer himself using a hot iron without prior application of local anaesthetics. However, some medicines were given following the process as pain killers. As described by Stafford and Mellor, (2005), dehorning might be useful to reduce the risk of injuries for both human and other animals and can be practiced with local anaesthetics and long-lasting analgesics to reduce pain during and after the operation (Theurer et al., 2012).

Calf housing
According to Curtis et al. (2016), risk of diseases, negative effects of welfare and feeding was increased due to group housing when calves were reared in cow barns which was the widely practiced housing method (96.2%) found in Mid-Country Sri Lanka. Only 3.8% of farms used individual pens for calf rearing. Housing should allow calves to easily lie down, stand up, turn around and adopt normal resting behaviours (Guatteo et al., 2010). Majority of farms (90.1%) had smooth cement/rough concrete flooring, and few had gravel/soil (6.0%) and wood material (3.9%). Bedding materials for calves were used only by 10.4% of farmers used either Grass (78.9%) or Wood shavings/Straw (21.1%). Prevalence of dirty (40.7%), hoof damageable (45.6%), and slippery floors (75.8%) were noticed as negatively affecting factors on calf welfare. Generally, considerable percentages of calves (74.2%) in the Mid-Country did not receive sufficient space for the lying area and were tied in the walking area or space restricted area in cattle shed. Calves were allowed for outdoor grazing by 12% of farmers for few hours (1-2 hrs) per day, even though intensive management system was practiced. This could reduce the risk of transmitting of air-born diseases by sharing of the same air space within the barn (Vasseur et al., 2010). In contrast, outdoor grazing without any shade or under intensive sunlight could increase the skin temperature of calves. In the current study, the skin temperature of calves in outdoor grazing was slightly higher (32.07 0 C) than that of calves in the indoor condition (31.30 0 C). The study by Eddy et al., (2001), emphasized that skin temperature directly reflects underlying circulation and tissue metabolism and do alternations to the sympathetic nervous system. Therefore, prior to letting the calves for outdoor grazing, attention needs to be paid on their skin temperature.

Hock wounds and hoof temperature
Thermography scans were evaluated to identify hock wounds by measuring heat emitted from the surface (Gloster et al., 2011). Accordingly the prevalence of hock wounds of calves in the present study was 83.4%. The number of hock wounds per calf was positively and significantly correlated (P<0.05) with bed length, width and area (r = 0.181, 0.234, 0.207, respectively, and floor slipperiness was positively and significantly (P<0.001) correlated with prevalence of hock wounds (r = 0.244). Wound severity was also significant correlated (P<0.05) with floor slipperiness where unit increasing of slipperiness, increased severity of wounds by 31.1%. In 2017, Sadiq et al., also observed high number of severely wounded cows on slippery floors compared those on non-slippery floors. Floor dirtiness also significantly associated with severity of wounds (P<0.001) and a unit increase of floor dirtiness augmented severity of wounds by 17.2%. Hoof temperature was significantly (P<0.05) associated with type of floor. The floors with cracks and hoof damageable floors showed calves with high hoof temperature. This may be due to bacterial infections of claw and hoof injuries in cracks positive environment (Hultgren and Bergsten, 2001;Gloster et al., 2011).

Calf feeding and weaning
Milk feeding of calves generally contributes to high growth rates during the pre-weaning period and improved production and health in adult life (Curtis et al., 2016). Dam-fed milk cannot be measured and controlled. Therefore, it might leads to hunger or overfed conditions. Only 2.2% of farms used bucket/bottle feeding of fresh whole milk (4 L/ calf / day) in two meals during their preweaned period. Dry feed availability is important for rumen development. Nevertheless, low intakes restrict the weight gain, nutrient intake and will create problems in ruminal digestibility and weaning transition (Lorenz et al., 2011). Although it was recommended to provide access to roughage and concentrates to calf within 10-14 days of age in Sri Lanka, (DAPH, 2014), the present study revealed that only 19.8% of farmers in the study area practised it. It was also revealed in the present study that adequate amounts of concentrates compared to the recommended amounts were given to claves. Water supplementation for claves should be started from the date of birth (DAPH, 2014). However, none of the farmers followed this recommendation and only 6.6% of farmers started water supplementation within a week, and others even later. Weaning off milk is the first feed transmission of calves (Vasseur et al., 2010) and is a very vital time period because of the stress that takes place during this time (Weaver et al., 2000). Weaning at the age of three months was the most applicable weaning age among dairy farmers (44.0%) in Mid-Country, Sri Lanka whereas 4.9% of farmers weaned their calves before three months of age. Gradual weaning which is the recommended practice (Daros et al., 2014) was adopted by all the farmers surveyed. According to the present findings, claves found in the study area were underweight compared to standard values (DAPH, 2014) as shown in Figure 1. Improper feeding practices, which negatively influences on feed intake, such as absence of separate feeder for calves (95%), sharing of adult cattle feeder and high feeder heights (72.1%) observed in the present study could be the reasons for underweighted-claves. Calves also might be underweight due to diarrhoea (Lorenz et al., 2011) and improper weaning practices (Sweeney et al., 2010).

Calf handling, diseases and mortality
Relationship between attitudes and behaviour of stock person towards the calf had affected on welfare and productivity of animal (Breuer  et al., 2000). It was observed in the present study that the farmers in the study area paid good attention to calf handling and there was no evidence of using electric prods, hitting and kicking. Further veterinarian was immediately informed by majority of farmers (97.3%) in case of sickness. Calf diseases and mortality have short-term and long-term detrimental effects on the performance of a dairy farm and exposure to a contaminated environment enable the transmission of pathogens (Guatteo et al., 2010). Parasitic diseases were common in 43.8% of farms in the study area, and followed by diarrhoea (28.1%), bloating (6.2%), naval infections (1.1%) and respiratory problems (1.1%). Guatteo et al., (2010) had identified that inadequate ventilation and air temperature influenced the incidences of infectious diseases in calves. Reporting the influence of low temperature inside the shed Curtis et al., (2016), reported that it increased the risk factor for diseases specially for calves under three weeks of age. According to the present survey, 23.1% and 30.2% of farms had poor ventilation and poor light condition inside sheds, respectively. Roofing materials used by farmers vary from asbestos (28.6%), tin (68.1%), polythene (2.7%) to tile (0.5%). However, a major concern was that 35.7% of farms had leaking roofs which might have contributed to the increased prevalence of diseases such as Diarrhea 32.4%, Parasitic diseases 38.2% and Bloating 8.8% compared to the prevalence of those with roofs without leaks (26.6%, 33.1%. 6.6%, respectively). Calf deaths were recorded in 28.0% of farms and in 39.2% of the farms mortality rate was higher than 5% per year. Several key areas were identified as causes for calf mortality, such as the prevalence of diseases (39.2%), improper flooring (84.3%), poor knowledge of calf welfare (68.6%) and nutrition (72.5%). Similarly, poor/inadequate quality housing (Curtis et al., 2016), poor management practices and disease prevalence (Renaud et al., 2018) were also recorded by researches in relation to calf mortality.

The fate of male calves
Many western countries treat male and female calves differently. They paid less attention and care for male calves than females. Ellingsen et al., (2014) had revealed that male calves were fed by less quality and insufficient quantity of colostrum supplement by farmers and easily vulnerable to diseases compared to females as they do not receive proper care and medical attention (Renaud et al., 2018). In addition, other risk factors were also found such as culling the -male calf (Cardoso et al., 2017), selling them for veal at 2 nd and 4 th week after birth (Marcé et al., 2011) and prevalence of high mortality rate (Pritchard et al., 2008). Compared to them welfare and ethical consideration of Sri Lankan farmers towards male calves were comparatively high. Majority of farmers (89.6%) sold their male calves after six months of age and treated them equal to females (99.5%) by providing all supplements including colostrum, concentrates, vitamins and milk feeding. Mean weaning age of male calves was 3.8+1.4 months with average body weight of 122.9+31.9 kg, and average concentrate intake was 0.55+0.25 kg/ day/ calf. Veterinary care was immediately sought by 96.5% of farmers in case of sickness.

Age group of farmers and welfare attitudes
Calves are sensitive animals and positive attitudes of a farmer could lower the mortality rate (Lensink et al., 2000). Low levels of withdrawal are also associated with positive contact (petting, touching, talking in a friendly manner) between calves and handlers (Ellingsen et al., 2014 (Lensink et al., 2001). This emphasized that seniority or experience level itself cannot improve calf welfare and it was essential to refine farmers with proper knowledge.

CONCLUSIONS
Several calf management practices were identified as risk factors associated with calf welfare. Poor calving and calf management practices such as not using calving pens, not practicing naval disinfection for new-borns, absence of calf pen, dam-fed colostrum feeding system were most prominent in Mid-Country dairy farms in Sri Lanka. Improper feeding management practices and lack of knowledge on welfare leading to underweight and high mortality among calves. Unacceptable flooring conditions such as slipperiness, poor cleanliness and hoof damageable floors significantly associated with prevalence and severity of hock wounds and high hoof temperature. However, an adequate amount of concentrates were supplied to calves with equal caring for both male and female calves. Young farmers followed proper management practices compared to adult and senior farmers. Awareness and training on good management and welfare practices to minimize the risk factors in dairy industry could easily be practiced for dairy farmers in Mid country area.