Background
Cattle grazing can help maintain biodiversity in agricultural landscapes and promote animal welfare. However, grazing of dairy cows has declined in recent decades due to the rapid increase in herd sizes and the shift toward loose housing systems and automatic milking. In large dairy herds, dry cows and heifers are the most promising animal groups that could graze throughout the grazing season. Their nutrient requirements are considerably lower than those of lactating cows, which also allows the use of wooded grazing areas. In addition, integrating semi-natural wooded pasture islets with field pastures provides animals with shade from direct sunlight.
Objective
The aim is to study how animal welfare and farm biodiversity can be promoted on conventional dairy farms by developing grazing methods for dry cows and heifers, without compromising their nutrition or health.
Our hypotheses are as follows:
- Grazing dry cows and heifers throughout the grazing season contributes to both their welfare and farm biodiversity.
- Integrating grazing on multispecies wooded pasture areas and field pastures increases animal welfare and farm biodiversity considerably more than field grazing alone.
Research implementation
The research will be conducted at the Viikki research farm as well as on commercial dairy farms in 2026-2029. The multidisciplinary consortium includes experts in animal nutrition and welfare, agroecology, and economics from the University of Helsinki and the
The project is led by Professor