A survey of dairy cattle farmers' management practices for cull cows in Ontario, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Removal of cows from dairy cattle production is a routine and unavoidable practice of the dairy industry and is often referred to as culling. The objectives of this study were to use a survey to describe current on-farm cull cow management, farmers' perception of cull cows' journeys to slaughter, and the adoption of current recommendations and regulations by Ontario dairy farmers. All Ontario dairy farmers were invited to complete a cull cow management survey between December 2020 and March 2021 that included 44 questions covering farmer demographic information, farm characteristics, and cull cow management. The survey response rate was 7.4% (n = 248); a total of 226 of the responses were included in this study for analysis. Most respondents indicated they have a written standard operating procedure (SOP) for cull cows (62%), and 48, 13, and 15% of those identified they use their cull cow SOP “always,” “sometimes,” and “never,” respectively. The more confident respondents were that cull cows arrived at slaughter in the condition they left the farm the less likely they were to have a cull cow SOP [odds ratio (OR) 0.83]. The most important sources of information for the management of cull cows were the herd veterinarian (64%) and members of the marketing/regulatory organization the Dairy Farmers of Ontario (44%). Drug withdrawal time was the only factor most respondents (73%) considered “very important” for the assessment of cull cows prior to transport. Most farmers believe cull cows journey from the farm to slaughter is three or less days (55%), and the confidence of farmers that cull cows arrive at slaughter in the condition they left their farm was generally high. Lastly, most farmers (66%) identified they were familiar with recent regulatory changes around the fitness, duration of transport, and lactation status for cull cows. These results highlight farmers' perceptions of the impacts and durations of the journey of cull cows differs from reality, and there are misunderstandings of the requirements for cull cow management. Further research should investigate how different strategies for training farmers may lead to improved cull cow welfare and regulatory compliance.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".