Questionnaires

Two questionnaires were used; a farmer attitude questionnaire and a management questionnaire, both completed by the main person in charge of the animals, either the owner or the farm manager. The attitude questionnaire measured general attitudes towards sheep, sheep management and husbandry practices, using three types of attitude statements, based on attitudes towards the behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. The questionnaire contained 88 statements in total and was developed based on results from two focus group discussions [23]. Using a five-point Likert scale, farmers were asked to indicate their level of agreement to the statements, the level of importance or perceived difficulty of performing and activity e.g. score 1 = not at all agree/not at all important/not at all difficult to score 5 = strongly agree/very important/very difficult. Questions were both positive and negative, but responses were re-coded so that a high score indicated that the farmer held a positive attitude towards sheep and sheep management. Several statements on a specific topic were used to measure consistent beliefs, which allows the identification of a person’s attitude towards a specific topic [12]. Thus, the attitudes that farmers held regarding sheep and management practices were used to establish their attitudes towards these aspects.

The management questionnaire involved a total of 51 questions on demographics, farm characteristics, animal numbers, labour units, production type, self-reported sheep husbandry and management practices, and perceived ‘barriers’ to best practice. Specifically, famers were asked if they performed the following management practices: daily monitoring of the ewe flock, monitoring of feed on offer, body condition scoring of ewes, ultrasound pregnancy diagnosis annually, keep mortality records, keep productive records, perform internal parasite egg count before deworming sheep, provide sheep with some sort of shelter (e.g. trees) and whether they manage ewes according to their nutritional needs. This section was conducted in an interview-style, where the lead researcher (CAM) and the farmer discussed the questions. This allowed the farmer to clarify anything he/she was uncertain of, and for the researcher to follow up with any questions for clarification. The completion of the questionnaires took from 90 to 180 min, depending on the level of discussion that occurred, both questionnaires were conducted a day before the first welfare assessment. Farmers were also asked to complete a stock tally form to provide details on their sheep numbers from 1^st of July 2016 to 30^th of June 2017.