Happy Cow: teaching methodology for the develop of students competencies and skills to evaluate cattle welfare

oleh: Marta Elena Alonso de la Varga, Juan Manuel Lomillos Pérez, Dorian Cadenas Álvarez, Antonio Molina Díaz, Javier Rodríguez Villalobos, Muhammad Qadir Safir Jabeen, José Ramiro González Montaña

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: Universitat Politècnica de València 2015-11-01

Deskripsi

During  the  past  years  the  consumer’s awareness about the importance of welfare of animals used for food production is increasing. In this way, studies and systems to evaluate and monitor the quality of the welfare, mainly in intensive systems productions,  have  been  developed  and guidelines and protocols with parameters to be determined have been published. However, they all have various problems and  there  is  no  universally  accepted methodology. Therefore, based on criteria and parameters based on the animal and on facilities and handling recommended on the aforementioned project and other variables considered important for dairy cows  health  and  welfare  by  professors from  the  Departments  of  Animal Production  and  Medicine,  Surgery  and Veterinary Anatomy, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of León, a free software program (Happy Cow) has developed by students of  the  School  of  Industrial  Engineering and  Computer  ULE  that  achieves  two objectives: to be used as a teaching tool to develop students competencies and skills necessary  for  the  evaluation  of  animal welfare using parameters based both on animals and facilities, and to improve the welfare of farm animals, identifying critical points and weakest, providing information and recommendations that could be used by each producer from assessments made on his farm.