Assessment of Welfare through Behavioural, Physiological and Biochemical Measures in Dairy Animals: A Review

Abstract

Welfare is the adjustment of individuals to the surroundings and it is the state of wellbeing of an animal in
the given environment. Its failure leads to sufferings, pain and poor welfare. Generally, the indicators of
poor welfare in farm animals are lessened growth, impaired reproductive function, body injury, sickness,
immunocompromisation, adrenal activity, behavioural anomalies and self-narcotization which leads to
economic losses to the farm, farmer and country. Welfare can be measured in many ways and corrective
measures can be taken to improve the poor welfare conditions and eliminate the sufferings of animals to
provide them a better and healthy life. The commonly used behavioural measurement methods include
temperament, flight zones, visual fields, vocalization scoring, analysing biochemical parameters,
physiological parameters etc. If farmers are properly trained it is easy and cheap to compile these
measurements so that resource-poor farmers can produce accurate audits on farm welfare. For achieving
better production and economics, welfare of animals should be assessed in order to maintain their
wellbeing. More research should be done for assessing welfare by modern methods so that animal rights
will be protected as well as welfare will be maintained.