CONSTRAINTS ON BEHAVIOUR And the use of behaviour to measure welfare Flashcards
Extensive Systems
• Generally low input, low output • Fewer animals • More space per animal • Less reliance on buildings • More difficult to monitor feed intake • More vulnerable to weather • More vulnerable to predators • More likely to be exposed to wildlife/outside diseases
Intensive Systems
• Generally high input, high output • Larger herd/flock sizes • Less space per animal • More reliance on buildings • More likely for disease to spread • More likely for behaviour to be restricted • More likely to express abnormal behaviours • More likely to be housed in barren environment/lack enrichment
semi-intensive broiler production
“In semi-intensive production systems, birds are kept in a poultry house with access to an outdoor area” (Madzingira, 2018, p.112)
Welfare advantages of both types of systems= Best of both worlds?
How can constraints on behaviour affect welfare?
- Dairy cattle housing example
- Efforts to improve health and biological functioning may lead to behavioural restrictions
- E.g., tiestall housing to improve hoof health, zero-grazing management for more frequent health checks, cow-calf separation to protect the health of the calf, etc
The 6 Freedoms
- Freedom from hunger and thirst
- Freedom from discomfort
- Freedom from pain, injury or disease
- Freedom to express normal behaviour
- Freedom from fear and distress
- Freedom to be free (proposed 6th freedom)
Describe what the sixth freedom means
How to give animals agency over their environment ?
First step: determining what matters to the animal
Natural/normal behaviour is difficult to define in domesticated farm animals– focus on behaviours that are important to the animal
• Timebudgets
• Preference tests • Motivation tests
What do cows think about tiestalls?
Cows spend 12-14 h/d lying down
In tiestalls, restriction of movement interferes with lying patterns:
Increase in duration of the “lying down pattern”
Increase in # of unfulfilled intentions to lie down
Increase in # of lying interruptions
Thus, from the cow’s perspective natural lying behavior is hindered
Animals themselves as stakeholders in their own care:
How to give animals agency over their environment ?
First step: determining what matters to the animal
Natural/normal behaviour is difficult to define in domesticated farm animals– focus on natural behaviours that are important to the animal
• Timebudgets
• Preferencetests • Motivation tests
Limitations of preference tests
➢Various studies have shown that previous experience can affect preference (e.g., many animals can be neophobic. Conversely, some may prefer an object simply for its novelty)
➢Experiment needs to be replicated in different conditions to assess consistency of the preference
➢Preference may not be constant over time and may differ for individuals of the same species
Motivation testing
How hard are animals willing to work for a given resource?
Cows attempted to push upwards of 40% of their own body weight to enter the lying area. Cattle may have aimed to push more weight but were encumbered by physical limitations, creating a potential ceiling effect. Thus, the study may have even underestimated the strong motivation of cattle to lie down in a desirable area.
Limitations of
Stereotypies
as welfare indicators
1) May be used as ‘coping’ strategies
- - Can sometimes improve welfare
2) Stereotypic behaviour becomes self-reinforcing and continues even if the environment changes
3) Stereotypies may transmitted through observation of conspecifics
Despite limitations, stereotypies can be useful welfare indicators
• Many result from behavioural restrictions
• MOST can either cause or indicate a welfare problem
How can we use behaviour to measure affective state?
Vocalisations and facial expressions
• (However vocalisations sometimes reflect positive valence; pitch is important)
Some newer techniques:
• Qualitative behaviour assessment
•Assessment of human animal relationship (HAR) • Cognitive bias testing (i.e. “judgement bias”)
• Anhedonia testing
Qualitative Behaviour Assessment
• First developed using pigs: since then, tested with other farmed (and recently non-farmed) animals
• Scientific method. Relies on ability of human observers to integrate details of behaviour, posture, and context to summarize animal’s style of behaving
• i.e. uses an assessment of the animal’s ‘body language’ to assess welfare • Observers judge style and expressive qualities of an animal’s behaviours
- Any behaviour can be done in different ways, e.g. an animal can walk in a calm, relaxed way or in a way that is tense and agitated; it can look at something in a curious way or a fearful way. Behaviour is the same but the expressive quality differs
Advantages of QBA
Advantages of QBA
o Feasibility
• Doesnotrequireanyrestraintorinterventioninthelives
of animals
• Canbeappliedataherd-level
• Nottimeconsumingorlabourintensive
o Interobserver reliability and biological validity are well documented for a range of species.
Stages of QBA
Stage 1: Free-choice profiling. Observers generate own descriptor lists from video clips showing a range of different behaviours
Stage 2: Scoring of behaviour is conducted using a pre-fixed list of descriptors
Stage 3: Data are analysed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and often followed up with PCA regression
[PCA= statistical procedure that transforms a set of observations of possibly correlated variables into a set of values of linearly
uncorrelated variables called principal components.]
