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Bull, Emily (2021) Designing for calf health: A user-centred approach to tackling Bovine Respiratory Disease in the UK dairy-bred beef sector. PhD thesis, Royal Agricultural University. doi:10.46289/MBUW3762
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15499 Bull, Emily (2021) Designing for calf health - a user-centred approach to tackling Bovine Respiratory Disease in the UK dairy-bred beef sector.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License All Rights Reserved. Download (12MB) | Preview |
Abstract
The dairy bred-beef calf rearing sector is complex and is influenced by many political and social factors as well as biophysical complexities. Concerns relate to animal health, welfare, and antimicrobial use. A key issue impacting each of these concerns is Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD). BRD is one of the most prevalent diseases affecting beef and dairy calves worldwide. This research flows out of data collected as part of a commercial research project and provides a social science perspective to understanding system complexities and farmer behaviour in relation to BRD, to help design an intervention for the sector. An interdisciplinary approach involving diverse data sources, collection methods and stakeholders was applied. Fifty-nine surveys were completed by dairy farmers and dairy-bred beef calf rearers, and four facilitated workshops attended by forty-three participants were carried out to identify current practice, challenges, and opportunities in the sector. Survey data and workshop transcripts were examined using inductive thematic analysis. The outputs were mapped in relation to behavioural variables to construct farmer personas. Personas represent a user centred design methodology, commonly used in retail and manufacturing sectors to ensure that products are designed with the users’ needs in mind, they also present an effective tool for communicating user issues within a sector. The research indicated that although not consistent, some farmers presented a high level of knowledge in relation to the management of dairy-bred beef calves, often going above and beyond basic practice to ensure high health and welfare. There is a demand for bottom-up, farmer-led discussion groups to drive action on farm and join up three currently siloed areas of scientific evidence, grey literature and farmer knowledge to effectively tackle the system challenge of BRD. A knowledge exchange framework was constructed and evaluated by farmers. The next steps of this research are to implement the knowledge exchange framework at a commercial level with the support of a trained facilitator to ensure impact.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | |||||||||
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| Additional Information: | Award conferred by the University of Gloucestershire in partnership with the Royal Agricultural University. | |||||||||
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Beef sector; Calf-rearing sector; Bovine Respiratory Disease | |||||||||
| Subjects: | S Agriculture > S Agriculture (General) S Agriculture > SF Animal culture S Agriculture > SF Animal culture > SF 191 Cattle |
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| Depositing User: | Anna Kerr | |||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 06 Nov 2025 15:24 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 07 Nov 2025 10:12 | |||||||||
| URI: | https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/15499 |
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