Euthanasia of Danish dairy cows evaluated in two questionnaire surveys

We interviewed a random sample of 196 Danish dairy farmers that had reported a dead cow to the Danish Cattle Database in 2002 and 196 dairy farmers that had reported a dead cow in 2006. Our objectives were to evaluate the proportion of euthanized cows, changes in the behaviour of farmers regarding euthanasia of cows over the years and possible reasons for these changes.It seems that the threshold for euthanasia of cows among farmers has changed. Farmers generally reported a lower threshold for euthanasia compared to 5–10 years ago.The threshold for euthanasia of cows has, according to the dairy farmers, become lower. This might have positive impacts on animal welfare as more seriously ill cows are euthanized in the herds and not put through a period of suffering associated with disease and treatment or transported to a slaughterhouse in poor condition.The peer reviewed literature on dairy cow mortality is relatively sparse. In a review on dairy cow mortality, Thomsen and Houe [1] concluded that the number of published studies is surprisingly low, especially seen in relation to the large impact of dairy cow mortality on animal welfare and the farmer's economy.Mortality risk defined as unassisted death and euthanasia in Danish dairy cows has increased significantly since 1990. The mortality risk has increased from approximately 2% in 1990 to 5% in 2005. This increase is seen for all major dairy breeds and for all parities. There has been only a slight increase in mortality risk during the period 2002 to 2005 (from approximately 4.7% to 4.9%). Throughout the years the mortality risk has been approximately twice as high in older cows (parity 3 or older) as in younger cows [2,3]. At first glance, this development seems very negative, as mortality risk in Danish dairy cows has more than doubled since 1990. The increased mortality can be caused by an increasing number of cows dying unassisted or by an increasing number of euthanized cows (or both). Cows dying unassisted pr