Thursday, 4th October - Farm Animal behaviour & Welfare Research Flashcards
Alleviation of environmental stress
Animal perspective
- How do cows utilise shade etc.
Prediction of risk
- At what point do animals show signs of heat stress
Management strategies
- Sprinklers, shade etc.
Body condition score
- BCS as an index of welfare
- Relationship to health and affective state
- Minimum acceptable level
Detection and alleviation of pain
- Pain detection
- Pain differentiation
- Practical methods of alleviation
Animal welfare codes exist for each agriculture species and it gives a minimum standard
kids: must bud withina certain time frame using certain methods, must use pain relief if over a certain age.
Instant fine for those who do not comply.
Stockpersonship
- Early rearing of calves
- Impact in later life
- Reactions to humans and milking process
- Training heifers
Dairy goat welfare
- Housing and feeding systems
- Pain mitigation for disbudding
- Kid rearing
How do we assess animal welfare?
An integrated approach to measuring welfare:
“… it is essential that a variety of welfare indicators be used if an adequate assessment of management systems is to be obtained.” (Broom, 1991)
Limitations of current methodologies of measuring welfare
Replacement of invasive procedures
Some methods can cause a stress response and confound results
Non-invasive procedures
- Behaviour
- Automated recording devices
- Accelerometers
- Heart rate and variability
- Respiratory rate
- Feeding behaviour
- Less invasive sampling techniques
•Saliva
What is infrared thermography (IRT)?
- Measures emitted radiated heat
- (represents 40-60% of heat loss from an animal)
- Non-invasive – images collected from a distance
- Can detect changes in heat loss during stress (due to changes in blood flow)
American scientists discovered than when you lie thes ympathetic nervous system get activated and blood flow changes direction in your eyes because when you are stressed, blood runs to the periphery and with that temperature changes are detected with the IRT machine.
Using it with cows shows when they are in pain. This is great as it is a non invasive measure of detecting pain and the graph shows that pain relief is effective.
Automated measures of welfare
Sick calves visited the feeder less
SHAM calves visited the feeder more
Disbudded calves spent less time lying
What do they prefer?
Calf preference for four different rearing substrates
Goat preference for four different flooring types
Lameness Scoring in dairy cows
Affective state
• Play behaviour is commonly observed in young animals and is believed to have a key role in an animal’s development by facilitating coordination of movement, exercise, allowing self-assessment and building social relationships
Reduction of play behaviour
The performance of play behaviour is reduced when animals are exposed to negative stimuli or environmental challenges
- Studies have shown that play behaviour is decreased or even abolished in juvenile animals (e.g. piglets and calves) experiencing
- Under-nutrition
‘• Insufficient space
- Disease
- Pain
- Thermal stress
Indicator of animal welfare.
• Play has been suggested as a useful indicator of animal welfare by showing the relative absence of negative emotions and presence of positive emotions, and is increasingly being used to assess welfare in agricultural species
Play behaviour of calves is reduced when they are experiencing: Pain
Play behaviour of calves is reduced when they are experiencing: Uncomfortable lying surfaces
Play behaviour of calves is reduced when they are experiencing: crowding
Summary
• Important to use an integrated/multi-disciplinary approach to measuring welfare
• Some measures/methodologies have limitations
• Examples of different measures and methodologies:
- Non-invasive measures of welfare
- Automated measures of welfare
- Assessing animal preference
- Assessing affective state
Work opportunities in behaviour & welfare
•MPI/Biosecurity- welfare officers (respond to complaints, cruelty) and policy
• University tutor/lecturer
• NGOs (SPCA, SAFE) •Department of conservation
• CRI/Government (eg. research technician/ scientist/extension)
- AgResearch
- Landcare Research
• Industry examples:
- DairyNZ
- LIC
- Beef and Lamb…
