Rearing calves with nurse cows: experiences of French organic dairy farmers

Summary

Improving animal welfare on farms is currently a major issue, in response to expectaons of cizens and consumers. In organic farming, reflecons are connuing on how to change livestock producon pracces to allow animals to express their natural behaviour most fully. Calf rearing in dairy systems is a focus of aenon. At the moment, separang calves from their mothers remains the most common pracce, but new techniques that favour the maternal bond are appearing. Understanding these pracces beer to idenfy condions under which they can be adopted by more farmers was the goal of a survey conducted in spring 2018 of organic dairy farmers who rear calves with adult cows. This work has been made under the GrazyDaiSy project, funded by the European Union program Core organic.