The perception of the welfare of sheep in extensive systems

With financial pressures on farm labour, development of increasingly sophisticated and informed consumer attitudes and decoupling of payments to farmers following revision of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy, sheep farmers may increasingly adopt more extensive systems of management. However, these current and new extensive systems of management, at least in the UK, are not, in our view, low-management systems. We maintain that high standards of animal welfare in these systems require significant management inputs which should focus on key events, for example providing appropriate nutrition to the pregnant ewe, care at lambing, and the control of diseases such as those caused by ectoparasites and endoparasites, and footrot which have the potential to lead to serious welfare problems. Such a system would use sheep with improving levels of adaptation to particular environments and challenges but provided with appropriate “support” at critical times in the annual cycle. There is a growing recognition of the need to consider the impact of any human:animal interactions on the sheep. The challenge is for sheep systems to develop adaptable management at a pace consistent with the rapidly changing European financial and consumer climate.