Viser l'autonomie alimentaire en élevage bio de vaches allaitantes, Focusing the feed autonomy in the suckler cows organic farming.

To rear the organic suckler cows focusing on the animal heath and welfare, it’s not so easy to do. If we want understand the more relevant points of this production system, as usual in organic agriculture, we have to consider the question from a holistic point of view. The suckler cows organic farming is based on the grazing. To graze is important for the welfare, health and animal fertility, and, at the some time, to grazing animals help to ameliorate the image of the organic animal productions. In good season the grazing covers all the animals nutritional needs, but in the winter, at the barn, the farmer has to provide all feedstuffs that normally the organic farm can produce by herself. It could be better to use pastures whit different characteristics for each animal production and each rearing condition, focusing on the improvement of forage production quality. To do that, we have to use vegetable species adapted to organic farming system and to soil and climate conditions, utilising local suitable ecotypes. Unfortunately, the grazing improves the parasite infestation risk, and the right pasture management is very important to control parasites. Ideal strategies to control parasites consist on moving herds and/or on rotating different animal species in the same pasture. The presence of predators could be a problem in the first times after the calving and when sick calves withdraw from the herd. So, we have to defend animals or whit defence dogs or electric fences. Today, we have to defend also the organic animal farming from the charge that grazing animals produce greenhouse gas. For this reason, the research has to demonstrate that organic agriculture is not polluting, because the presence, at the some time, of agriculture and animal husbandry activities in the same farm allows the control of greenhouse gas emission, tanks to inputs recycling and autoconsumption.