Healthy cows, happy farmers? Exploring the dynamics of mastitis and farmer well-being

Abstract

Clinical mastitis, a prevalent production disease in the dairy industry, causes significant pain and swelling in dairy cows' udders. Although previous research highlights a symbiotic relationship between humans and animals, particularly in terms of health, this study investigates how animal health, specifically clinical mastitis, influences farmers' well-being. Acknowledging farmers' pivotal role in mitigating animal health problems, we examined the human-animal relationship by exploring how dairy cow health relates to the psychological well-being of dairy farmers. This was performed by investigating the connection between animal and farmer health and whether it is mediated by farmers' perceptions of mastitis as a production disease and their sense of control over the situation. For the current study, we combined and matched data from a large questionnaire study covering dairy farmer's well-being (n = 356) with data on dairy cow herd health. For statistical analyses we used the PROCESS macro (ver. 4.2) for serial multiple mediator analysis, an analysis that allows for the estimation of the effect of multiple mediators in a causal chain. We found that farmers' well-being is indirectly related to animal health when mediated through their illness perception and perceived self-efficacy, underscoring the importance of cultivating awareness and control over mastitis occurrences. For these estimations, we controlled for the effect of farm size, expected income from dairy production, marital status, and cohabitation status of the farmer, as well as age and gender. Our results indicate that maintaining healthy animals with minimal mastitis incidents, coupled with farmers' perceived self-efficacy, is positively related with farmer well-being.

Keywords: dairy farmer; human-animal relationship; illness perception; self-efficacy.