Short communication: Describing mortality and euthanasia practices on Canadian dairy farms
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The objective of this study was to describe mortality rates and euthanasia practices used for cows, heifer calves, and male dairy calves on Canadian dairy farms. An internet survey was administered to Canadian dairy producers between March and April 2015 to collect information on current management practices. Approximately 81% (867/1,076) and 63% (673/1,065) of respondents reported that at least one animal died unassisted and at least one animal was euthanized on the farm in the preceding 12-mo period, respectively. Overall, mean mortality was 8% for cows, and 6 and 2% for preweaning and weaned heifers, respectively. On average, 48, 76, and 89% of all reported mortality events in cows, weaned heifers, and preweaning heifers were recorded as unassisted deaths. Cows that died without assistance were necropsied more often than preweaning heifers dying without assistance; these cows were also necropsied more than cows that were euthanized. Conversely, preweaning heifers that were euthanized were necropsied more frequently than those that died without assistance. Choosing not to perform necropsies on animals that die of unknown causes could represent a missed opportunity to identify cause of death and inform changes to prevent future deaths. The use of a firearm was the most common method for euthanizing cows and heifers (54%) and male dairy calves (51%). Approximately 7% of respondents reported using blunt force to euthanize animals. The use of this method was much higher for euthanasia of male dairy calves (34%) than for heifer calves (7%). Québec respondents euthanized their animals using blunt force more often than farmers from other regions. Further, 53% of respondents using blunt force indicated it was their primary method of calf euthanasia; these results are extremely concerning. Approximately 31% of respondents who reported that they do not use blunt force to euthanize heifers and cows did report using blunt force to euthanize male dairy calves. These results can be used to inform veterinarian-client communication, broader extension tools and programs, and industry policies to improve dairy cattle health and welfare, a goal that is becoming of increasing importance from a consumer assurance perspective.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".