Culling perspectives from dairy producers, veterinarians, DHI and feed mill advisors

a Q-methodology study

Abstract

While minimizing total losses (sum of production loss and disease control expenditures) is recognized to be the most profitable approach, dairy producers still have flexibility regarding the timing of their decisions, the liberty to make individual choices (e.g., genetic selection), or the handling of certain constraints (e.g., regulations, quotas, etc). Farmer's socio-psychological characteristics were demonstrated to be more important to farm performance than herd-level variables describing production, health, and fertility. Research on motivational and behavioural aspects of farmers’ decision utility are sparse, and nonexistent regarding culling expectations and the associated decision process. Our goal was to identify shared criteria on culling decision held by dairy producers and farm advisors, using a Q-methodological study, which allows for the systematic exploration of subjectivity.