The assessment of housing conditions of dairy cows in littered loose housing systems using three scoring methods

摘要

In Germany during the last few years straw-based loose housing systems for dairy cows have become more common as a result of their lower investment costs. To compare housing conditions in these partially new systems, three scoring methods were used on 64 dairy farms: the Austrian 'Tiergerechtheitsindex', TGI 35 L: a modified German version of this, TGI 200; and ALD, a method constructed by the present author with the aim of achieving more differentiated results than those yielded by the TGIs. The comparison of housing systems produced relatively similar results, on average, for each method, but considerable variation occurred within each housing system. Organic farms achieved higher scores than conventional ones. A comparison of the three scoring methods resulted in a relatively high level of consistency concerning both the mean percentage of maximum points and correlations of rank orders.