Welfare conditions of dairy calves housed outdoors and with deep litter system while using heat-treated reed canary grass during winter in Northern Sweden.

Animal welfare is an ethical and legal commitment for farmers, which will reflect in livestock system’s sustainability. In Scandinavia, it is common practice to house calves indoors due to harsh winters.

Conversely, indoor housing is very often related to more occurrences of respiratory and other diseases in calves when compared with outdoor enclosures, impairing animal welfare.

Low temperatures can be harmful to calves, however, it is possible and beneficial to house calves outdoors if providing an environment enriched with dry and good quality deep bedding.

The straw of wheat, barley, and oats is commonly used as bedding, but it is scarce in northern Sweden, which can be one of the limitations for housing calves outdoors during winter. Therefore it is necessary to investigate potential bedding material alternatives.

A new commercial product has been produced from reed canary grass (RCG) that is shredded heat-treated and pressed into briquettes.

The product is used as fertilizer and for biogas but may also be useful as bedding material; however, it has not yet been tested.

The project aims to evaluate welfare conditions when testing if the treated RCG is a suitable bedding material alternative to barley straw for pre-weaned dairy calves housed outdoors during winter, and indoor and outdoor housing conditions will be compared, irrespectively the bedding material. A cross-disciplinary group will conduct the project from December 2023 to November 2025.