No welfare issues with housed cows

Indoor dairying stacks up economically, environmentally and ethically, says a South Canterbury farmer whose business already has nearly 2000 cows living under cover. Aad van Leeuwen's operation has been used as a template by the three companies applying for resource consent to house cows for up to eight months of the year in the Mackenzie Basin. It was also visited by Green Party representatives last week in the hope that it would persuade the politicians that this is not "factory farming", as they and the general press leapt to label the Mackenzie applications. Walk into any one of van Leeuwen Group's three free stall barns and that is immediately evident. There is complete calm. Some of the girls are munching the sweet-smelling forage mix lining the feed lane; others are lying back ruminating on a top-of-the-range cow-mattress, or taking a stroll down to the water trough or back scratcher. It is a far cry from the images of sows in crates or hens in cages that the term factory farming conjures in the consumer's mind. In van Leeuwen's newest barn robot milkers enable the cows to go for a milking when they get the urge, which, when Rural News visited last week, was 2.7 times/day on average. "They have to give at least six litres or the robot won't let them in," he says. Each visit is rewarded with a feed of concentrate while the robot runs its routine of teat clean and massage, followed by laser-sighted cupping-on and individual quarter-monitored milking. "Each cup cuts off automatically once the quarter is milked out, so there is no over milking." When the cow leaves the stall, and before another can enter, a quick 160oC steam clean completes the cycle."So there is no cross-contamination of mastitis from cow to cow. In a conventional shed the cups only get cleaned at the end [of milking] and even then it's only at 70-80oC." The result is an average somatic cell-count of 130,000 for the 80% heifer herd so far this season, and the current count is just 75,000.