Animal based indicators for a better health and welfare of dairy goats - using Stable Schools as new extension concept

Dairy goat farming is a growing business in Germany since more then one decade.  In the same manner, there is a growing demand on extension for dairy goat farms regarding husbandry and management. Although there is some knowledge present, there is a lack of transer into practical dairy goat farming. That is the starting point for our new initiative Stable Schools for dairy farmers.

Background and Objective

A stable school group consists of 5 farmers each. In our project 7 stable school groups will be established all over Germany. Extension offeicers will provide assistance for the stable groups. They will facilitate the group formation, talks and processes, but they will not act as promoters.

Three times during the projetc period welfare assessments r4egarding health, hosuing and mangament will be conducted on all participating farms. The results will be input for the stable school group extension as well as benchmark criteria for a successful extension process.

Approach

The extension initiative Stable Schools will be wide spread in media and goat farming associations. A maximum of 35 farms will be selected from the total number of applicants. The institute of Organic Farming will conduct welfare assessment on all selected farms to determine state of the art at the beginning of the project. Welfare assessment will be repeated half-time and at the end of the project. The assessment can be used as input for stable school groups and is a measure for the definition of dairy goat welfare.

Thünen-Contact

• Georg, Heiko Institute of Organic Farming

Involved Thünen-Partners

• Brinkmann, Jan Institute of Organic Farming
• March, Solveig Institute of Organic Farming
• Sporkmann, Katrin Institute of Organic Farming

Involved external Thünen-Partners

• Bioland Beratung GmbH
  (Augsburg, Deutschland)
• Thüringer Landesanstalt für Landwirtschaft
  (Jena, Deutschland)
• Bayerische Landesanstalt für Landwirtschaft
  (Poing, Deutschland)

Funding Body

• Federal Ministry of Food und Agriculture (BMEL)
  (national, öffentlich)
• Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE)
  (national, öffentlich)

Duration

9.2014 - 3.2018

More Information

Projekt type:
Project funding number: 13MDT010
Project status: finished

• Artikel Allg Bauernblatt.pdf
• Artikel Schafzucht 19 2014.pdf
• Flyer

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