Small ruminant dairy production is becoming increasingly important in the European agricultural context. Currently, to be profitable, females have to give birth every year, but these repeated gestations lead to the exhaustion of the animals, resulting in early slaughter after 6 to 7 years of production.
For dairy goats, farmers are faced with the choice of slaughtering the kids or selling them right after birth to industrial fatteners, which raises growing animal welfare and ethical concerns. Pilot tests conducted by FiBL France (Lactodouce project) have shown that non-gestating goats were able to produce milk of similar quality to that of a conventional lactation after a few weeks of lactation.
Gentle Dairy project aims to:
Thus, the project will avoid eliminating non-gestating goats and reduce the number of kids while improving animal welfare.
Experimental on-farm work, welfare assessment, organisation of farmers meetings and communication
