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Home / Research / Departments / Department of Animal Health, Welfare and Nutrition / Medarbejdere / MKB

Staff project list

Marianne Bonde

Project manager

Improvement of animal welfare in organic sow herds by reducing piglet mortality and post-weaning diarrhoea

01/01/2007 - 31/12/2007

The aim of the project is to enhance animal welfare in organic sow herds by improving the control and management of piglet mortality and post-weaning diarrhoea, both of which constitute important health and welfare problems in organic pig herds.

Prevention of selected diseases and parasites in organic pig herds - by means of a HACCP based management and surveillance programme

01/06/2007 - 31/05/2010

The overall objective of the project is to promote animal health and welfare in organic pig herds in Europe.

This will be achieved by carrying out the following three components:

• To conduct an international knowledge synthesis for establishing future needs for research into disease and parasite prevention in organic pig production

• To estimate risk factors for selected diseases and parasites in pigs in European organic herds
• To develop and evaluate a HACCP based management and surveillance systems for organic pig herds

Review of shoulder ulcers in Danish sows

01/07/2007 - 31/10/2008

The purpose of the project is to review existing knowledge regarding shoulder lesions in sows, focusing on the development of ulcers, on-farm risk factors, treatment and preventive measures. The project consists of a knowledge synthesis as well as supporting data collection in commercial sow herds.

Project participant

Bull calf welfare assessment (BCW) - Decision support and documentation

01/01/2006 - 31/12/2008

Bull calf producers are challenged with animal welfare problems such as respiratory disease, liver abscess, laminitis, scab and mortality. Commercial bull calf production in Denmark is often conducted in ‘concept systems’ specifying housing conditions and management procedures for animal welfare reasons. Since this aspect plays a major role in marketing the meat these production concepts are vulnerable to public critique on animal welfare. The project aims at developing a management system for improvement and documentation of bull calf welfare at herd level. The project develops a welfare monitoring protocol based on external welfare assessment of animal clinical health and behaviour, housing system and management, as well as data of medical treatments, meat inspection data as well as the mortality rate. The protocol is implemented in 16 specified bull calf herds during 2007-2008. A running feed-back of welfare assessment results to the individual farmer forms the basis of an evaluation procedure of the validity of the management system for decision support and documentation. Further evaluation is focused at estimating the possible correlation between welfare measures and production measures as growth, classification, medicine usage etc.. Finally, the project introduces the management system to the Danish advisory service.

Prevention and handling of weak sows

01/01/2007 - 01/01/2009

The objective of the project is to conduct research targeting an improvement og animal welfare in Danish sow herds through improved prevention and handling og weak sows in systems with loose housed pregnant sows. When the results are implemented we expect that the welfare of the sows are improved in a manner, which will improve farm economy as well. The objective will be achieved through the following goals:

1. Identification of sows with an elevated risk for culling/euthanasia (wakk sows) in systes with loose housed preghgnant sowsand further to obtain increased knowledhge on how the stockman identifies and handle sows with difficulties in these systems

2. To indentify risk factors and to estimate efffetcs of prevalence of weak sows

3. To improve an existing replacement model for sows targeting handling of weak sows


Last updated: Thursday 30 August 2007 - Mette.Holme@agrsci.dk