‘Keep calm and carry on’ was a wartime message to the British public that has achieved renewed fame in the last few years. The strategy was simple: in times of extreme difficulty a cool head combined with stoicism is an appropriate response to ensure a successful outcome. The latest major challenge to society (COVID-19) met with a very different response, and only history will reveal whether ‘Stay home and worry’ will be equally effective. In devising blueprints or strategies it is extremely important to have a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve, whether it be maintaining world freedom or stopping a pandemic. In the case of livestock agriculture, it is helping to feed a rapidly growing global population in harmony with the needs of current and future generations. I hope that I have stated this clearly, and calmly. If so, I ask you to picture a scene. We are on a Calm Farm. Dairy animals go about their daily lives contented, unhurried and focused on the simple feeding and socialising activities that are so important to them. Unstressed, their productive capacities and abilities to avoid and, when necessary, cope with physiological and pathological challenges are maximised. They are not alone: the exact same characteristics also apply to the farmer and husbandry staff that we meet. How is this calm farming approach relevant to the aspirations we had when we established the EU COST Action DairyCare? Our objective was to harness the power of computing technologies to assist our management of dairy livestock. A simple rearrangement leads us to Computing Assisted Livestock Management, CALM. In this short Research Reflection I shall assess how far we have come towards the achievement of sensible goals related to technological assessment of dairy animal wellbeing, and speculate on what more things both can and need to be done to finish the job. It is a personal account. DairyCare was a major collaboration involving several hundred active researchers. To involve them all would be impossible, and I do not pretend to speak for them all. As will become evident, the wide skills base that was assembled was so successful in its primary objectives that different skills, chiefly in economics, are now needed to exploit all of the technological advance that has been achieved. DairyCare succeeded in a second direction. Whilst the focus was technology development, by assembling a large cohort of biologists with animal welfare interests, it soon became apparent that technology should run alongside and help to enable improved management practices. This Special Issue is, therefore, in two sections. The first is dedicated to technology development and the second to a novel management practice that has the potential to significantly improve the wellbeing of cows and calves: cow-calf contact rearing. That section is introduced by my DairyCare colleague, Sigrid Agenäs.

中文翻译：

---

DairyCare“行动蓝图”：畜牧业的福祉

'保持冷静并进行’是向英国公众发出的战时信息，在过去几年中重新声名鹊起。策略很简单：在极端困难的时候，冷静的头脑加上坚忍的态度是确保成功结果的适当反应。对社会的最新重大挑战（COVID-19）遇到了截然不同的反应，只有历史才能揭示“呆在家里担心'将同样有效。在制定蓝图或战略时，清楚地了解您要实现的目标非常重要，无论是维护世界自由还是阻止流行病。就畜牧业而言，它正在帮助养活迅速增长的全球人口，同时满足当代和后代的需求。我希望我已经清楚、冷静地说明了这一点。如果是这样，我请你画一个场景。我们在一个平静的农场。奶牛满足、不慌不忙地过着日常生活，专注于对它们如此重要的简单喂养和社交活动。在没有压力的情况下，他们的生产能力和避免并在必要时应对生理和病理挑战的能力被最大化。他们并不孤单：完全相同的特征也适用于我们遇到的农牧业人员。这种平静的农业方法与我们在建立 EU COST Action DairyCare 时的愿望有何关联？我们的目标是利用计算技术助攻我们的管理乳制品家畜. 一个简单的重新排列导致我们计算辅助畜牧管理， 冷静的。在这篇简短的研究反思中，我将评估我们在实现与奶牛福利技术评估相关的合理目标方面取得的进展，并推测为了完成这项工作，还可以做哪些事情，还需要做哪些事情。这是一个个人帐户。DairyCare 是一项重大合作，涉及数百名活跃的研究人员。让他们所有人都参与是不可能的，我不会假装为他们所有人说话。显而易见的是，所组合的广泛技能基础在其主要目标上是如此成功，以至于现在需要不同的技能，主要是经济学，来利用已经取得的所有技术进步。DairyCare 在第二个方向上取得了成功。虽然重点是技术开发，但通过聚集一大批对动物福利感兴趣的生物学家，很快就很明显，技术应该与技术并驾齐驱，并有助于改进管理实践。因此，本期特刊分为两个部分。第一个致力于技术开发，第二个致力于有可能显着改善奶牛和小牛健康的新型管理实践：奶牛与小牛接触饲养。该部分由我的 DairyCare 同事 Sigrid Agenäs 介绍。