’Stable Schools’ as a concept for animal health and welfare promotion

Summary

The concept of Farmer Field Schools was implemented in a group of Danish organic dairy farms in order to support the process of reaching a common goal among the farmers of phasing out antibiotics from their herds. The results from the herds indicate that crucial changes took place during the project period of approximately one year. We suggest that this is due to the combination of the farmer group’s ownership over the common goal in combination with the individual goals of each farmer. This formed a motivation for improvements on all farms. The encouraging process of seeing successful development in colleagues’ farms together with the advice received from the group formed basis for a strong common learning process .