A NEW PORTABLE INSTRUMENT TO EVALUATE SOFT FLOORING MATERIALS IN DAIRY COW HOUSING

The influence of flooring materials on health, welfare and social behaviour of cows is more and more relevant in dairy housing due to the increasing sensitivity of the high yielding animals to the environment and, in particular, to the walking surfaces. This fact is confirmed by the growing frequency of leg injuries and hoof pathologies occurring in dairy herds. In recent years several investigations have been carried out on alternative materials and techniques to obtain less hard, slippery and abrasive floors than the common ones made of concrete. In particular, the soft floorings, made of rubber mats, seem to be very interesting according to the results of extensive research showing their beneficial effects on animal health and welfare. Since there are no instruments yet available capable of making appropriate testing in real housing conditions and with the real load entity (cow weight), we decided to carry on a work aimed at realizing an instrument suitable for the measurement of the skid resistance of all kinds of flooring materials capable of evaluating the combined effect of the surface texture and the deformability of the materials, being also portable and suitable for specific tests. The functioning of the instrument and the results of laboratory tests are presented in this paper. Also the first field test results are shown.