Animal Welfare

The largest part of the Fortuna family are our 13,500 cows.  There’s not a bad one amongst the entire lot of them.  Well, there’s a few trouble makers but we look after them too. 

We talk about the cows as being part of our family because that’s how we like to treat them.  Animal welfare is critical.  Those three words we use a lot (happy, healthy and thriving) apply to the cows as much as the CEO.  

One of the things we’ve done is to adopt the 5 domains for modern animal welfare practice.  The 5 Domains Model was developed in New Zealand and provides a greater focus on the mental state of an animal (how the animal 'feels') and acknowledges the welfare can be both positive and negative.  The 5 Domains are:

  • Nutrition
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Behaviour 
  • Mental State