SAC Research

Aims:

• to establish the most important factors influencing animal welfare and production
• to assess the cost and impact of different management decisions
• to provide labour and input costs information on different management systems

Objectives
There are four main objectives set for this project:

• To establish a hierarchy of welfare criteria for sheep in extensive sheep farming systems.
• To match this with a hierarchy of actions that shepherds can take to influence the welfare of the sheep in their care.
• To provide quantifiable data linking input costs (for example labour) associated with the hierarchy of welfare actions and corresponding flock outputs.
• To put all the findings into a decision support framework to provide the whole-farm perspective necessary to explore the practical implications and provide knowledge transfer relevant to a particular region or system.