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Towards loose housing in Swedish organic dairy production

Swensson, Dr. Christian and Gustafsson, Ingrid (2008) Towards loose housing in Swedish organic dairy production. Poster at: Cultivating the Future Based on Science: 2nd Conference of the International Society of Organic Agriculture Research ISOFAR, Modena, Italy, June 18-20, 2008.

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Summary

For hundreds years there has been a tradition with tethered dairy cows in Sweden. The last decades the old fashioned way to hold cows have been questioned and the number of dairy cows in loose housing has been increasing. Last year (2004) 19 percent in total of all farms with milk production in Sweden had their cows in loose housing. Because of EU-legislation concerning all organic production no farms are allowed to build tie stalls any more and after 2010 all organic dairy cows are supposed to live in loose-housing systems.
The aim of the thesis was mainly to find out the number of farms with tethered organic dairy cows. Furthermore the purpose was to study if there are any regional differences regarding the building system for organic dairy herds. There are important differences between buildings made for conventional dairy cows and organic ones. Some examples from organic rules are that calf and cow are allowed to go together during the whole colostrums period and the area per animal in some cases is bigger. That often makes organic buildings for dairy cows more expensive to build than conventional ones.
In the end of 2004 60 percent of the organically kept dairy cows, which is equivalent to 40 percent of the farms in Sweden, were already in loose-housing systems depending on that decision. There are big regional differences.


EPrint Type:Conference paper, poster, etc.
Type of presentation:Poster
Keywords:milk production, building system, cow houses,
Subjects: Animal husbandry > Production systems > Dairy cattle
Research affiliation: International Conferences > 2008: IFOAM OWC: Research Track / ISOFAR > 3.1 Husbandry and breeding- ruminants
Deposited By: Swensson, Dr Christian
ID Code:12534
Deposited On:06 Oct 2008
Last Modified:12 Apr 2010 07:36
Document Language:English
Status:Published
Refereed:Peer-reviewed and accepted
Additional Publishing Information:This paper is published in the conference proceedings:
Neuhoff, Daniel; Halberg, Niels; Alfldi, Thomas; Lockeretz, William; Thommen, Andreas; Rasmussen, Ilse A.; Hermansen, John; Vaarst, Mette; Lck, Lorna; Carporali, Fabio; Jensen, Henning Hgh; Migliorini, Paola and Willer, Helga, Eds. (2008) .Cultivating the Future Based on Science. Proceedings of the Second Scientific Conference of the International Society of Organic Agriculture Research (ISOFAR), held at the 16th IFOAM Organic World Congress in Cooperation with the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) and the Consorzio ModenaBio, 18 . 20 June 2008 in Modena, Italy.. International Society of Organic Agriculture Research (ISOFAR), c/o IOL, DE-Bonn, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FiBL, CH-Frick. http://orgprints.org/13672 and http://orgprints.org/13674

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