Parasitic diseases and animal welfare indicators of grazing livestock with applications for animal welfare assessment
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Short summary
To meet increased global demand for food from a growing population, livestock production must be intensified. However, this must not be at the expense of reduced animal health and welfare. Parasitic worm infections are an obstacle to efficient pasture-based ruminant production.
The project aims to investigate the role of various parasitic infections in connection with the promotion of animal welfare in sheep and cattle. It will lead to the development and implementation of measures that actively improve animal welfare but also strengthen animal welfare by developing sustainable methods for parasite control. We will also study more basic questions about how parasites affect animals from a welfare perspective.
The challenge is to develop indicators that detect in time when welfare is negatively affected by intestinal worms to be able to quickly target specific control measures on the farms. The project has two main goals. First, we will examine the role of parasites in the welfare of grazing animals. Then we will investigate how measures against parasites such as targeted means-tested treatment can alleviate unnecessary suffering in affected animals. To be able to do this, we must develop improved welfare indicators based on automatic registrations of animal growth and activity patterns, which are supplemented with tests to detect parasites with current molecular techniques.
Published within the research project
Effects of lambing season on nematode faecal egg output in ewes (2021)
Automatic weighing as an animal health monitoring tool on pasture (2020)
Effects of nematode parasitism on activity patterns in first-season grazing cattle (2019)