An experiment was conducted on twenty lactating crossbred dairy cows to study the effects of two space allowances and two initial milk yield levels on indicators of welfare relating to behavior, performance and milk yield level of crossbred dairy cows housed in strawyards. The experiment lasted for 12 weeks with two treatment (half the cows were low yielding and half were high yielding) each at low and high space. The respective total and bed allowance per cow were 6.7 and 4.5m2 for low and 13.5 and 9.0 m2 for high space allowance. High milk yield cows had lower lying times and lying synchrony than low yielding cows. Higher feed intakes of high yielding cows (P<0.001) resulted in higher ruminating times and higher feeding times than for low yielding cows. It is concluded that total lying time and lying synchrony are also key factors of welfare. High yield lactating crossbred dairy cows had a shorter lying time than low yield crossbred cows, and there was no evidence that high and low yield cows respond differently to changes in space allowance, indicating that their housing requirements were similar.
