Il vitello a carne bianca in Piemonte: benessere in allevamento e patologie gastrico-respiratorie

Introduction. Veal calves fattening is very complex because management and animal welfare affect their health and productivity. Aim. This work provides an overview of veal calves fattening conditions to evaluate the effects of different aspects of animal welfare on gastric and respiratory diseases, carcass weight and glycolysis post mortem trend. Materials and methods. A total of 41 variables related to animals, nutrition, housing system and transport were checked on 17 farms. At slaughter 514 carcasses were weighted and inspected to evaluate: health conditions of gastric and respiratory systems; pH on longissimus thoracis at 60 min. Results and discussion. Farms fattened calves in small groups, varying between 3÷6 calves/pen. Calves’ liquid diet was supplemented with soaked or micronized or whole maize up to 110-120 days before slaughtering (6-7 months). 70% of farms interviewed employed whole maize, 18% soaked maize, 12% micronized maize and 47% provided also fibrous feeding. Veal calves were quickly loaded (37 min) through quite difficult paths with different slope. Therefore social groups were not respected and animals from different pens were mixed at loading. Carcass pH at 60 min post mortem was regular in 90% of animals/farm (6.0≥ pH ≤6.8). One farm had 33.3% of animals with pH greater than 6.8. Frequency analysis indicated on 14.3% of animals a chronic or acute respiratory diseases; while 84.9% of calves had gastric diseases. Correlation analysis showed that: larger livestock facilities correlated to higher respiratory disease frequency; high density of animals in fattening pens confirmed a slower growth tendency; prolonged loading of the animals lowered muscle pH. This relationship suggests that larger barns have more ventilation problems, which means a lowering in air turnover, an increase in temperature difference between the inside and the outside of the barn, a higher relative humidity and air temperature. Finally, analysis of variance showed no statistical differences on use of whole, soaked or micronized maize on the gastric diseases. Conclusions. In intensive veal calves production, gastric and respiratory diseases are the most important indicators of animal poor welfare, related to the long-term stress. Our results suggest that gastric diseases are not only related with the feeding plan but may also be associated with other stressors during the fattening cycle. In conclusion our study should encourage the development and application of on-farm solutions with the aim of improving calf welfare.