Feasibility and acceptance of ready-made standard operating procedures in calf care on German dairy farms.

Abstract

Calf loss continues to be a considerable problem on German dairy farms. Untrained personnel or the lack of best practice routines are potential reasons. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) may increase process consistency and can improve animal health and animal welfare. We developed SOPs for 8 important tasks in calf care and provided them online to interested dairy farmers and their employees. Five questionnaires were embedded to collect data on demographics, use, perception, and feasibility of SOPs. Main objectives of the study were to investigate 1) if there is a gap between the existence of SOPs and the wish for SOPs, 2) if participants (n = 301) consider ready-made SOPs as feasible for their farm and 3) suitable to train new personnel, and 4) if they state their confidence in task execution higher after the courses. We experienced a strong discrepancy between the existence (13.1%) and the wish for SOPs (69.4%). Most the participants rated ready-made SOPs as feasible for their farm (66.5%). Eighty-five percent fully agreed or agreed to the statement that SOPs are a suitable tool for training new employees. Interestingly, 64.2% of employees mentioned, that they wanted to be involved in the creation of SOPs specific to their farm. The SOP based e-learning courses increased the confidence in performing tasks in calf care, especially concerning the tasks which were less often performed tasks such as tube feeding, emergency care and testing of colostrum quality.