• Livestock

Foot health program

The BroilerNet project involves a bottom-up approach to identify challenges and innovation needs for broiler farmers in Europe, and to collect promising and already successfully implemented Good Practices to meet the challenges in question. The top Good Practices selected by experts within the three thematic areas (animal health management, animal welfare, and sustainability) have been summarized in factsheets. Footpad lesions are a key indicator for animal welfare. Causes for footpad lesions can be related to barn climate, a problem with the feed composition, or other animal health problems. The Foot Health Program was introduced in Sweden in 1994 and is mandatory to be allowed the maximum stocking density of 36 kg/m². The program was developed by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Since the implementation, every broiler flock is scored at slaughter according to a standard, and interventions are put in place if the footpad scores are too high. By these means, a painful health and welfare problem was successfully reduced all over Sweden.