Irish Farmers’ Engagement with Dairy Calf Welfare: An Exploratory Analysis

Abstract

Dairy calf welfare is receiving increasing public attention. To ensure optimal practices, farmers need to engage and be mindful of unethical behavior. However, avoiding information on animal welfare is common and often driven by willful ignorance. We conduct an exploratory analysis on survey data from 546 Irish dairy farmers. We investigate farmers’ choice to view a picture of transported dairy calves and find that over 20% of farmers prefer to remain in a state of ignorance. Higher self-reported calf mortality and education increase the odds of viewing the picture while being a female decreases them. Farmers’ reasons for avoiding include the lack of new information in the picture, anticipated negative feelings, and biased information expectations. Additional explorations suggest that the farmers’ decision is not a survey artifact, but the results are not robust and further research is needed to confirm. Possible suggestions to improve calf welfare are to foster farmers’ trust, package information as new evidence on best calf-rearing practices, and better understand perceptions of animal welfare.