Feasibility and acceptance of ready-made standard operating procedures in calf care on German dairy farms

Calf loss continues to be a considerable problem on German dairy farms. Untrained personnel or the lack of best practice routines are potential reasons. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) may increase process consistency and can improve animal health and animal welfare. We developed SOPs for 8 important tasks in calf care and provided them online to interested dairy farmers and their employees. Five questionnaires were embed- ded to collect data on demographics, use, perception, and...