Status Quo der Tierwohlsituation in der deutschenMilchziegenhaltung

Dairy goat farming is a growing market in animal husbandry in Germany. Due to this expansion, farmers special advice on health, feeding and housing is growing as well. Thus a project was initiated to assess welfare and housing systems three times in three and a quarter year on 40 dairy goat farms in Germany. The main goal was to benchmark welfare concept on the same farms. In the first assessment, 1876 lactating goats in total were assessed on 40 farms. From a set of 22 animal based indicators in total, 8 showed a higher prevalence than 5 %: moderate and severe claw overgrowth, mild udder lesions, small udder scars, moderate udder asymmetry, swellings, head lesions, hairless patches and avoidance distance test. Interestingly, not more than 1.6 % of goats showed signs of mild and moderate lameness compared to 47.6 % of goats having moderate claw overgrowth. The concentration of CO2 varied between 476 ppm and 729 ppm and ammonia concentration ranged between 0.9 and 1.2 ppm, independently from air volume of the goat barns. The results of the first application of a welfare assessment protocol on German dairy goat farms could be used to benchmark input on farm- and study-group- level.