Danish dairy farmers’ perceptions and attitudes related to calf- management in situations of high versus no calf mortality Mette Vaarst *, Jan Tind Sørensen University of Aarhus, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Institute for Animal Health, Welfare and Nutrition, P.O. Box 50, DK-8830 Tjele, Denmark 1. Introduction Danish dairy production has gone through dramatic structural change during the last two decades. The proportion of herds with >100 cows has increased from <2% of all herds in 1990 to 30% in 2004 (Trinderup and Lauritsen, 2006). The proportion of the dairy cows housed in loose-housing systems has increased from 15% to 74% from 1988 to 2002 (Skjøth and Mortensen, 2004). Milk production per cow has increased by 75% during the last 20 years (Anon., 2006b). Despite these structural changes, the mortality among calves in Danish dairy production has not changed. The overall mortality risk for calves from 1 to 180 days after birth was 7% in 1999 and has been relatively stable during the last 20 years (Nielsen et al., 2002; Anon., 2006a), despite much knowledge in the area and a widespread farm-advisory system in Denmark. It can be argued that some of the aforementioned structural changes present disadvantages for the preven- tion of calf mortality. The mortality risk increases with herd size in Danish herds (Nielsen et al., 2002), and calf mortality generally is higher in group housing than in individual housing (Losinger and Heindrichs, 1997). Lack of bio-security (typically caused by importing calves into one herd, as is very often seen with bull calves in today’s Danish dairy herds) is a risk factor for mortality (Nielsen et al., 2002). There is a complex relationship between herd manage- ment and calf mortality. Although calf mortality increases with increasing herd size, calf mortality decreases with Preventive Veterinary Medicine xxx (2009) xxx–xxx ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 3 October 2007 Received in revised form 15 February 2009 Accepted 16 February 2009 Keywords: Calf-management Dairy cattle Farmer attitudes Qualitative semi-structured research interviews ABSTRACT Calf mortality has remained at a high (risk 7%) in Denmark, despite much knowledge disseminated to farmers. We conducted a qualitative interview to explore calf managers’ perception of their own management and working situation, and how this related to calf mortality problems in their herds. Twenty-eight calf managers from herds with either no (NO) or high (HI; 17–31%) calf mortality in 2004 were included in the study. We used our judgement to create a model of the inter-relationships among the attitudes that seemed most different between the two groups of farmers. ‘Flexible time,’ (for activities such as management of crisis or unexpected events) was crucial; it allowed the farmer to intervene immediately at first sign of a crisis. Our interpretation suggests that focus on the farmers time planning and structure of everyday activities is, therefore, a key to understanding and solving problems related to calf disease and mortality. An important distinction between the groups was whether the calf manager had a basic belief that calf mortality is a permanent crisis that has to be expected to be present on a dairy farm. Previous experience in solving disease and mortality problems in calves had a strong positive influence on this belief. We suggest that the issues of empowerment and flexible time management be explored further to assist dairy-calf raisers. ß 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +45 89991344/22901344 (Cell); fax: +45 89991525. E-mail address: Mette.Vaarst@agrsci.dk (M. Vaarst). G Model PREVET-2541; No of Pages 6 Please cite this article in press as: Vaarst, M., Sørensen, J.T., Danish dairy farmers’ perceptions and attitudes related to calf-management in situations of high versus no calf mortality. Prev. Vet. Med. (2009), doi:10.1016/j.pre- vetmed.2009.02.015 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Preventive Veterinary Medicine journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/prevetmed 0167-5877/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.prevetmed.2009.02.015