Animal welfare: cattle also need shelter against rain and cold

Cattle seek shelter in Churwalden, eastern Switzerland Keystone / Arno Balzarini

Cattle need a roof over their heads when they spend a lot of time outdoors in the rain and cold, says the Swiss Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO). A daily inspection round is also essential to check their welfare and state of health.

The FSVO pointed out the requirements and the legal basis in a specialised information report published on Wednesday. From an animal welfare perspective, problems arise above all in extreme climatic conditions such as wet, cold and wind, to which the animals are exposed without protection.

Cattle are increasingly being kept outdoors again, especially as this form of husbandry meets their natural needs and can be operated without expensive infrastructure and with relatively little labour.

Animals react to the cold with an increased metabolic intensity and, in the longer term, with morphological adaptations such as increased fat growth and fat build-up, the FSVO said. They then also have an increased energy requirement and need more feed.

+ No bonuses for horned cows, decide Swiss voters

According to the authorities, in cold and wet conditions a shelter must allow all animals to lie down at the same time. It should be protected from the wind and sufficiently dry to prevent the animals from becoming soaked and chilled. On wet or very heat-dissipating ground, the animals may not lie down at all, which can lead to exhaustion.

According to the FSVO, the entry ways to the weather shelter should be large enough so that high-ranking animals cannot block the entrance. Shelters with an open long side facing away from the main wind direction have proved particularly effective for horned animals.

Sufficient care of the animals is also necessary so that a timely response can be made in the event of problems, accidents or injuries. The health and welfare of the animals must therefore be checked daily, the authorities said.

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here. 

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].