Bien - être animal en élevage laitier : Problèmes majeurs rencontrés et relation avec certaines caractéristiques des fermes

National audience; The objectives of the study were i) to highlight negative and variable aspects of dairy cow welfare in commercial farms, and ii) to determine which farm characteristics were associated with impaired welfare. We assessed welfare using the Welfare Quality ® protocol in 131 commercial farms that differed in location (highlands vs. lowlands), cow breed (Holstein vs. Montbéliarde), herd size (fewer than vs. more than 50 lactating cows), housing (cubicles vs. deep bedding), or milking system (milking parlor vs. robot). Within each farm, scores that express the degree of farm compliance with 11 welfare criteria were calculated (absence of hunger, thirst, diseases, normal behavior...). We used linear models to assess the association between farm characteristics and criterion scores. Six criteria had low scores (