In recent years there has been growing public interest in calves’ welfare and housing conditions by several different agricultural publications and projects. At the same time dairy farmers’ interest in calves’ welfare has also increased. There is a couple of assessment systems like Welfare Quality and Naseva for measuring cattle welfare and housing conditions. However, assessment system for measuring only calves’ welfare and housing conditions has not been developed yet.

The object of this thesis was to create an on-farm tool for measuring calves’ welfare and housing conditions. This thesis is a functional thesis which contains both a study and a product part. The tool was developed by using collected theoretical material. The optimal calf management process working charts, which was developed by Luoma-Tokoi and Pekkinen (2012) in their thesis: ‘The development of calf management processes’, has been used as a baseline for the tool. More information from theoretical materials from field researches about calves’ welfare and housing conditions and how to measure those things has also been used in the creation of the on-farm tool. The tool was created by using my own deduction from the theoretical materials.

This thesis was commissioned by Akraamo –learning and service center. The commissioner of this thesis is willing to develop a mobile application to publication for later on from the materials of this thesis. The content that includes: texts, information, scoring chart suggestion and calculation program developed with Excel.

On-farm tool was on a trial run in three dairy farms since it was developed. It was used for collecting information about tool’s operability. After the test use dairy farmers were interviewed by using half-structural questionnaire about farmers’ opinions about the tool’s operability, user friendliness and reliability.

The on-farm tool consists of extensive amount of factors which effect calves’ welfare and housing conditions from birth to the weaning. The tool was developed to be useable on every dairy farm whatever building solution for keeping the calves or what their calf management process is.