22 Sept 2026
Ginny Sherwin BA, VetMB, DipECBHM, PhD, MRCVS previews her session at BCVA Congress, where findings from a study of key dairy industry stakeholders will be revealed to delegates.
Image: Savo Ilic / Adobe Stock
Historically, dairy welfare has focused largely on preventing disease and distress, but a shift has taken place – ultimately leading to positive welfare being listed as a priority in the Dairy Cattle Welfare Strategy 2023-2028.
The environment in which dairy cows are kept has a major influence on welfare, alongside health, productivity and public perceptions of dairy farming. Housing design, therefore, needs to balance the cow’s biological and behavioural needs with farm-level considerations such as labour, economics, climate, infrastructure and herd management.
A study, therefore, aimed to explore how key dairy industry stakeholders perceived their ideal dairy cow housing system, using a series of focus groups and interviews with multiple stakeholders from across the industry. Thematic analysis was performed to determine the main themes.
During the sessions, it was clear that no single consistent definition of the “ideal” dairy farm existed. This reflected the diversity of the dairy farm systems found across the UK. Instead, the ideal dairy farm was one that was able to balance the needs of the key stakeholders: the cows, the farm staff, the farm business, society and geopolitical constraints.
Cow welfare was perceived as extending beyond the prevention of disease, injury and other negative welfare states, towards providing cows with agency, choice and opportunities for beneficial experiences on top of their normal management. This reflects the broader shift within animal welfare science from the traditional focus on negating suffering towards enabling animals to have positive experiences and a “life worth living”.
To highlight this, participants described environments that should provide consistent access to essential resources, such as feed, water and adequate lying space, but also opportunities for enrichment and the expression of a range of choice for natural behaviours. This aligns with research demonstrating that dairy cattle are motivated to perform behaviours including grazing, exploration and social interaction, and that providing opportunities for behavioural expression may contribute to positive welfare.
However, participants also recognised that choice alone should not be equated with good welfare. This is an important distinction, as animals may make choices that are not necessarily beneficial where their environment, previous experience or available resources constrain decision making. Therefore, providing agency requires not simply increasing the number of choices available, but ensuring that the available options are appropriate, accessible and likely to support positive welfare, as well as maintain the health of the animal.
A recurring finding was that staff were considered fundamental to translating a well-designed environment into good welfare outcomes. Participants recognised that buildings or facilities alone could not guarantee good welfare if they were poorly managed or difficult for staff to use.
This reflects the wider literature demonstrating that stockperson behaviour, knowledge and attitudes are important determinants of farm animal welfare. Consequently, an ideal cow environment was viewed as one that was not only appropriate for the animal, but also functional and intuitive for the people responsible for managing it.
Participants emphasised the importance of having sufficient numbers of appropriately skilled staff, suggesting that labour availability and competency may represent important components for the success of cows’ environment. This is particularly relevant given concerns regarding recruitment and retention within the UK agricultural workforce. Designing systems that reduce unnecessary physical demands, simplify routine tasks and enable staff to care effectively for animals may therefore benefit both cow welfare and employee well-being. Evidence also exists that positive working conditions and job satisfaction are associated with staff retention, suggesting that a cow-centred environment and a people-centred working environment must be considered synergistically.
The physical building itself was also considered important in determining whether cows could access resources comfortably and express appropriate behaviours.
Participants discussed the potential for automation to improve environmental consistency, reduce labour requirements and facilitate more responsive management. This is consistent with the increasing use of automated milking, feeding and monitoring technologies within dairy production, which may allow more individualised management while reducing some routine labour demands. However, participants highlighted a significant challenge was the ability to modify existing infrastructure to progress environments in line with new information or technologies.
Retrofitting older buildings was perceived as technically and financially difficult, while planning requirements could further restrict farmers’ ability to make substantial changes. This reinforces previous research demonstrating that housing decisions are influenced not only by animal requirements, but by capital availability, existing infrastructure, land, regulations and the wider farming context. Consequently, recommendations for cow-centred housing need to recognise that the “ideal” environment may not always be practically achievable, particularly on established farms.
Interestingly, participants did not perceive housing and grazing as inherently opposing systems. Instead, they identified different benefits associated with each environment. Housing was viewed as providing greater consistency in climatic conditions, nutrition and resource availability. While grazing offered greater environmental variation and opportunities for behavioural expression. This reflects research demonstrating that cows show a motivation to graze, particularly under favourable environmental conditions, but that preferences are influenced by weather, pasture quality, indoor feed availability and previous experience.
Climatic challenges were discussed around grazing, with variable and unpredictable-at-times climatic conditions impacting the pasture availability. The variability of weather extremes is likely to be influenced more in the future given current climate change predictions.
Grazing, therefore, should not necessarily be considered universally superior to housing; rather, the welfare value of each environment depends on how it is managed, the characteristics of the animals using it, and the climatic conditions present.
The findings consequently support the concept that there may be multiple routes to achieving good welfare, rather than a single optimal production system. Differences between farms, climates, infrastructure and individual cows mean that standardising dairy production around one housing or grazing model may be inappropriate.
Participants also identified a potential disconnect between societal expectations and farming realities. Grazing was frequently associated by the public with naturalness and good welfare, whereas indoor systems can be perceived negatively, despite potentially providing advantages in terms of nutrition, climatic protection and health management.
Previous research has similarly demonstrated that consumers often associate outdoor access with positive welfare and natural living. This creates a communication challenge for the dairy industry, particularly where the public’s understanding of welfare is based on visible characteristics, such as pasture access, rather than a broader range of factors that could influence welfare. Improving the visibility and transparency of this therefore requires the industry to show how welfare is achieved within the different systems used, rather than simply defending particular production systems or combating them against each other.
Participants also challenged the perception that profitability and welfare are necessarily competing priorities. Instead, business sustainability was viewed as a prerequisite for maintaining welfare over the long term. This is consistent with research showing that farmers may be more willing to adopt welfare-improving practices where these are perceived to provide economic or practical benefits, such as improved productivity, longevity or reduced veterinary costs. From this perspective, welfare and profitability were viewed as interdependent rather than inherently conflicting objectives.
An economically unsustainable system is unlikely to maintain high welfare in the long term, mainly due to lack of funding availability to invest. Furthermore, this can be compounded as poor welfare could then generate economic costs through disease, reduced productivity, labour requirements and premature culling. The ideal dairy environment therefore needs to achieve a balance between positive welfare, practical functionality and economic resilience, recognising that these factors are interconnected rather than mutually exclusive.
Participants also questioned whether what is currently considered “normal” within dairy production should necessarily define what is appropriate for the future. This reflected a broader recognition that conventional housing systems are the product of historical development, practical constraints and established industry practices, rather than necessarily representing an optimum for cow welfare.
Challenging convention was, therefore, viewed as important, where existing approaches may limit opportunities for positive welfare, behavioural expression or adaptation to changing environmental conditions. However, participants did not advocate change simply because it was different; rather, innovation was viewed as requiring a clear welfare or practical rationale. This distinction is important, as familiarity can reinforce established practices even when alternative approaches may offer advantages. Participants, therefore, highlighted a need for the industry to be willing to question established norms and consider fundamentally different approaches, while ensuring innovations remained practical, economically viable and capable of delivering meaningful improvements in cow welfare.
Ultimately, this study has suggested the ideal dairy farm is not a particular building, housing system or grazing model, but a system capable of adapting to the needs of its cows, people and the business. Moving towards positive welfare means being willing to question what has traditionally been considered “normal”, while recognising that meaningful change must remain feasible and sustainable.
Perhaps the future of dairy housing is, therefore, not about finding one perfect system, but about creating better choices, better environments and better opportunities for cows and staff to thrive.
Ginny Sherwin qualified from the University of Cambridge in 2011 and then did a farm animal internship at the RVC, in association with Westpoint Veterinary Group. Following two years in private farm practice, she undertook a farm animal residency at the University of Nottingham in 2014. She passed her European College of Bovine Health Management exams in 2017 and completed her PhD in Streptococcus uberis mastitis in 2020 at the University of Nottingham. She is currently an associate professor in farm animal, as well as being the sub-dean for animal husbandry EMS and deputy sub-dean for Farm Animal. Ginny’s main focus is on clinical farm animal veterinary work and is a RCVS and European-recognised specialist in bovine health management. Her research interest is in dairy herd health, especially calf health and mastitis.