While parrots are popular birds to keep as pets, little is known about the relationship between them and their owners and about the frequency of the problematic behaviors they display. The data for ...this study were collected using an anonymous questionnaire that consisted of three parts: basic questions about owners and their parrots; a "Parrot Owner Relationship Scale" (PORS), modified from the "Monash Dog Owner Relationship Scale" (MDORS); and questions about the frequency of behavioral problems in the parrots. The questionnaire, shared on social media, yielded 354 respondents. A principal component analysis (PCA) of the PORS revealed a picture very similar to that previously found for dog owners. The components were "Owner interaction," "Emotional closeness," and "Perceived cost," and they explained 42% of the total variance, with all three components exceeding Cronbach's alpha values of 0.72. The PORS subscales were similar to those obtained from the MDORS, indicating that relationships between owners and their parrots can be described in similar terms to those used to describe the relationships between owners and their dogs. Answers related to behavioral problems were given on a 5-point Likert scale, where 1 = never and 5 = always. A low frequency of behavioral problems was reported (between 1.14 and 3.23), with the three most common being excessive vocalizations (3.23), fearful behavior (2.33), and the parrot stealing human food (2.34). A PCA revealed three components, "Aggression," "Fear," and "Non-social behavior," that explained 45% of the variance. The Aggression component was associated with all aspects of the social relationship with the owner. Thus all three components that were used to quantify the relationship between an owner and their parrot had measurable associations with the parrot's aggression.
The nature of the relationship between companion dogs and their owners has important impact on the effect of life for both dog and owner. Identifying factors that affect the dog–owner relationship ...will assist the understanding of how the successful relationship is achieved and how the less successful relationship is mended, with potential benefits for the welfare of both species. In the present study, we investigated the effect of several dog and owner characteristics, including the personality of the dog, on the dog–owner relationship as measured by the Monash Dog Owner Relationship Scale (MDORS). Data were collected by inviting owners of dogs that had been tested on the Danish Dog Mentality Assessment (DMA) to answer an online questionnaire. We were able to match 421 owner answers with their dogs' DMA test results. The questionnaire consisted of the 28 items of the MDORS, as well as questions about the owners and their dogs. Using factor analysis, 5 dog personality traits could be derived from the dogs' test results on the DMA. The predictive value of questionnaire-based owner and dog variables and the 5 dog personality traits on the dog–owner relationship was tested using multiple linear regressions: 1 for each of the 3 subscales of the MDORS. Overall, the variables investigated only predicted a small proportion of the variance in MDORS scores, and owner characteristics appeared to influence the dog–owner relationship more than dog personality traits did. We found that children in the family and using the dog only for company were negatively associated with the owners' perception of the relationship with their dogs. The only dog characteristics to predict the dog–owner relationship were fearfulness and fear-related behavior problems.
•Cows show specific pain behaviours.•The pain behaviours are altered by analgesia.•The pain behaviours can be summarized in a pain scale.
Pain compromises the welfare of animals. A prerequisite for ...being able to alleviate pain is that we are able to recognize it. Potential behavioural signs of pain were investigated for dairy cattle with the aim of constructing a pain scale for use under production conditions. Forty-three cows were selected and fifteen different behaviours were scored, subsequently a clinical examination was performed to allocate the cows to a pain and non-pain group. The animals were then treated with an analgesic or a placebo and after a resting period the cows were re-scored by two observers blinded to the treatment. Six behaviours were found to be significantly different between the pain and non-pain group and robust enough to be included in the pain scale: ‘attention towards the surroundings’ ‘head position’, ‘ears position’, ‘facial expressions’, ‘response to approach’ and ‘back position’ (a seventh, piloerection, was also significant but seemed difficult to use as it changed rapidly; p<0.05 for all measures). The Cow Pain Scale is the sum of the score for the aforementioned behaviours. For each individual animal before and after treatment, it was significantly lower after analgesic treatment (p=0.003) in the ClinPain group but not after placebo treatment (p=0.06); the pain score did not differ significantly before compared to after treatment with analgesic or placebo for the non-pain group (p=0.2; p=0.1). A second study was conducted to further validate the Cow Pain Scale. Cows from two herds were randomly selected (n=119) and their behaviour scored by two observers. Subsequently the cows were clinically examined and allocated to a pain and non-pain group (n=96, 23 cows were excluded because of incomplete examination). The cows from the pain group scored higher on The Cow Pain Scale compared to the non-pain group for both observer I (p<0.0001) and observer II (p=0.0001). For the two observers the sensitivity of the Cow Pain Scale was calculated to 0.61/0.75 and the specificity to 0.75/0.75 with a weighted Kappa of 0.62. In conclusion the Cow Pain Scale has the potential to be applied for the assessment of pain in dairy cattle under production conditions.
•Changes in tail posture can predict a tail biting outbreak at pen level.•Percentage of hanging tails in pens close to an outbreak was almost doubled.•A correlation between number of tail damages and ...lowered tails were identified.•No changes in activity was identified prior to a tail biting outbreak.
Detecting a tail biting outbreak early is essential to reduce the risk of pigs getting severe tail damage. A few previous studies suggest that tail posture and behavioural differences can predict an upcoming outbreak. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate if differences in tail posture and behaviour could be detected at pen level between upcoming tail biting pens (T-pens) and control pens (C-pens). The study included 2301 undocked weaner pigs in 74 pens (mean 31.1 pigs/pen; SD 1.5). Tails were scored three times weekly (wound freshness, wound severity and tail length) between 07:00 h–14:00 h from weaning until a tail biting outbreak. An outbreak (day 0) occurred when at least four pigs had a tail damage, regardless of wound freshness. On average 7.6 (SD 4.3) pigs had a damaged tail (scratches + wound) in T-pens on day 0. Tail posture and behaviour (activity, eating, explorative, pen mate and tail directed behaviour) were recorded in T-pens and in matched C-pens using scan sampling every half hour between 0800–1100 h 1700–2000 h on day -3, -2 and -1 prior to the tail biting outbreak in T-pens. Further, to investigate if changes in tail posture could be a measure for use under commercial conditions, tail posture was recorded by direct observation from outside the pen. The live observations were carried out just before tail scoring on each observation day until the outbreak. The video results showed more hanging/tucked tails in T-pens than in C-pens on each recording day (P < 0.001). In T-pens more tails were hanging on day -1 (33.2%) than on day -2 (24.8%) and day -3 (23.1%). Further, the number of tail damaged pigs on day 0 was correlated with tail posture on day -1, with more tails hanging in pens with 6–8 and >8 tail damaged pigs than in pens with 4–5 tail damaged pigs (P < 0.001). Live observations of tail posture in T-pens also showed a higher prevalence of hanging tails on day 0 (30.0%; P < 0.05) than on day -3/-2 (17.2%), -5/-4 (15.4%) and -7/-6 (13.0%). No differences in any of the recorded behaviours were observed between T-pens and C-pens. In conclusion, lowered tails seem to be a promising and practical measure to detect damaging tail biting behaviour on pen level even when using live observations. However, there were no changes in activity, eating, exploration or tail-directed behaviours prior to a tail biting outbreak.
Current animal welfare protocols focus on demonstrating the absence (or at least low levels) of indicators of poor welfare, potentially creating a mismatch between what is expected by society (an ...assurance of good animal welfare) and what is actually being delivered (an assurance of the absence of welfare problems). This paper explores how far we have come, and what work still needs to be done, if we are to develop a protocol for use on commercial dairy farms where the aim is to demonstrate the presence of positive welfare. Following conceptual considerations around a perceived “ideal” protocol, we propose that a future protocol should be constructed (i) of animal-based measures, (ii) of indicators of affective state, and (iii) be structured according to indicators of short-term emotion, medium-term moods and long-term cumulative assessment of negative and positive experiences of an animal's life until now (in contrast to the current focus on indicators that represent different domains/criteria of welfare). These three conditions imposed the overall structure within which we selected our indicators. The paper includes a critical review of the literature on potential indicators of positive affective states in cattle. Based on evidence about the validity and reliability of the different indicators, we select ear position, play, allogrooming, brush use and QBA as candidate indicators that we suggest could form a prototype positive welfare protocol. We emphasise that this prototype protocol has not been tested in practice and so it is perhaps not the protocol itself that is the main outcome of this paper, but the process of trying to develop it. In a final section of this paper, we reflect on some of the lessons learnt from this exercise and speculate on future perspectives. For example, while we consider we have moved towards a prototype positive welfare protocol for short-term affective states, future research energy should be directed towards valid indicators for the medium and long-term.
Two kinds of initiatives exist to ensure welfare in broiler production: welfare legislation, where all broiler production in a country or region must comply with legally defined welfare standards; ...and market driven initiatives, where part of the production must meet specific welfare standards and is sold with a particular label, typically at a price premium, or as part of minimum welfare standards defined by a retailer, a fast-food chain or the like. While the effects of national legislation may be undermined by price competition from lower welfare imported products, the effects of market driven initiatives may be limited by lack of willingness from consumers to pay the extra cost. To investigate how this works out in practice, we compared broiler welfare requirements in 5 European countries, Denmark, Germany, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Sweden, in 2018, by means of the Benchmark method. A number of welfare dimensions, covering the input features typically modified in broiler welfare initiatives, were defined. A total of 27 academic welfare experts (response rate 75%) valued the different levels within each dimension on a 0 to 10 scale, and then weighted the relative contribution of each dimension to overall welfare on a 1 to 5 scale. By combining these values and weights with an inventory of existing welfare initiatives, the additional welfare generated by each initiative was calculated. Together with information on national coverage of each initiative, the Benchmark score for each country's production and consumption of chicken meat was calculated. Sweden achieved a much higher Benchmark for national production due to higher legal standards than any of the four other countries. The Netherlands, on the other hand, achieved a Benchmark for national consumption of chicken at the same level as that found in Sweden, because market driven initiatives complemented more welfare-limited Dutch legislation. So, despite some uncertainties in the Benchmark method, it appears that market driven initiatives can have a strong impact on improving broiler welfare, building on those standards achieved by animal welfare legislation.
Providing environmental enrichment for broilers is a potential strategy to increase welfare, activity, and health. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of environmental enrichment on ...health and leg bone characteristics of broilers. One control and 8 types of enrichment were included: 2 distances between food and water (7 and 3.5 m), roughage, vertical panels, straw bales, 2 platforms (30 and 5 cm), and a lowered stocking density (34 kg/m2). Birds were kept according to conventional Danish guidelines. The study included 58 pens with approximately 500 birds each. On day 35 of age, 25 birds per pen were killed and included in a postmortem analysis of wooden breast, body condition scores, pathological conditions (femoral head necrosis, arthritis, tenosynovitis, fractures, tibial dyschondroplasia, and twisted tibiotarsus), muscle width of the lower leg, and tibiotarsus properties (bone strength, weight, length, and proximal diameter, middle diameter, and distal diameter). It was predicted that environmental enrichment would have a positive effect on pathology with the exceptions that environmental enrichment that increased activity would pose a risk factor for wooden breast development, and straw bales would be a risk factor for bacterial infections (arthritis, tenosynovitis, and femoral head necrosis). Furthermore, it was hypothesized that enriched groups would have increased muscle width, bone strength, and dimensions of the tibiotarsus. Broilers with 7 m between food and water had a longer distal diameter of the tibiotarsus than those with straw bales (P = 0.04). The birds provided with vertical panels had wider leg muscle than the treatments with roughage (P = 0.045), 3.5 m distance (P = 0.049), and straw bales (P = 0.044). No effects were found for the remaining outcomes. These results suggest that provision of vertical panels and increased distance between resources can result in larger muscle and bone dimension, possibly having a positive effect on leg health. Furthermore, the provision of environmental enrichment does not appear to be a risk factor for wooden breast or bacterial infection.
The aim of this study was to investigate if calves' play behaviour and non-nutritive sucking behaviour, as indirect measures of welfare status, are associated with the age of the calf when group ...housed, age when observed, age difference within the group, pen size, milk feeding system, current or previous sicknesses, access to dry teat, indoor/outdoor rearing, sex, organic/conventional farm, group size and regrouping events. An observational study was conducted on 176 Danish dairy calves in the age range of 1-12 weeks, on both conventional (n = 17) and organic (n = 5) farms. All calves had been group housed before 8 weeks of age and had spent various periods of time with the dam and/or individually housed before being group housed. Behaviour was recorded continuously by filming each individual calf over a period of 30 min.
The calf's age when group housed for the first time was not found to be significantly associated with duration of either play behaviour (P = 0.55) or non-nutritive sucking behaviour (P = 0.44). It was found that calves had significantly reduced odds of playing for longer than the mean play duration (5.5 s) for each day of their lives (OR = 0.97, P = 0.003). Also, they had reduced odds of performing non-nutritive sucking behaviour for longer than the mean non-nutritive sucking duration (145.5 s) when milk was allocated by drinker buckets fitted with a teat compared to by bowl or trough (OR = 0.06, P = 0.02).
No significant associations were found between calves' age when group housed for the first time and play and non-nutritive sucking behaviour. It was found that calves' play behaviour decreased with increasing age, and that non-nutritive sucking behaviour decreased when milk was allocated with a teat compared to no teat.
Growing acknowledgement that food systems require transformation, demands comprehensive sustainability assessments that can support decision-making and sustainability governance. To do so, assessment ...frameworks must be able to make trade-offs and synergies visible and allow for inclusive negotiation on food system outcomes relevant to diverse food system actors. This paper reviews literature and frameworks and builds on stakeholder input to present a Sustainability Compass made up of a comprehensive set of metrics for food system assessments. The Compass defines sustainability scores for four societal goals, underpinned by areas of concern. We demonstrate proof of concept of the operationalization of the approach and its metrics. The Sustainability Compass is able to generate comprehensive food system insights that enables reflexive evaluation and multi-actor negotiation for policy making.
•A Sustainability Compass to guide food system sustainability assessments.•Societal goals on health, environment, equity, economy; with key areas of concern.•Sustainability scores are calculated via a hierarchical approach to indicators.•It enables reflexive evaluation and multi-actor negotiation of food systems outcomes.•We demonstrate proof of concept of operationalization of the approach and metrics.
Contemporary zoos house polar bears (Ursus maritimus) to serve the conservation efforts of these institutions. However, evidence of behavioural problems in captivity has highlighted the need for ...methods to assess polar bear welfare, why valid and feasible animal-based welfare indicators are a prerequisite. Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA) has been used to assess emotional state in various species. This study therefore aimed to assess the ability of QBA to discern emotional state in zoo-housed polar bears, and further to investigate its validity through associations to behavioural and health-related indicators, as well as intra- and inter-day consistency of QBA scores. A list of 24 terms was developed by reviewing the literature and on-site assessments. Reliability of the list was tested through Kendall’s W between two assessors (Inter-OR), as well as over time (Intra-OR), based on videos. QBAs and behavioural observations were collected on 22 polar bears from nine zoos in four European countries, repeated within days (three times) and across days (four days). Behavioural observations were summarized as percentage of time spent in the respective categories, whereas behavioural diversity was expressed by the Shannon Index. Health-related indicators were expressed as an overall dichotomous value (presence/absence). Principal component analysis revealed two main components categorised as valence (PC1, 29.5%) and arousal (PC2, 15.1%). Reliability was met for both PCs, with a W of 0.82 for PC1 and 0.68 for PC2 for Inter-OR, and 0.92 for PC1 and 0.89 for PC2 for Intra-OR. PC1 was significantly positively associated with behavioural diversity (p = 0.006), environmental interaction (p = 0.006) and rest (p = 0.005), and inversely with stereotypic behaviour (p < 0.001) and general activity level (p = 0.003). PC2 was significantly positively associated with stereotypic behaviour (p < 0.001), environmental interaction (p = 0.040) and general activity level (p < 0.001), and inversely with awake inactivity (p = 0.002). Valence scores revealed no significant effect of time of day nor day, however a significant effect was found between early to mid-day on arousal scores (p = 0.015). The results provide evidence of sensitivity and some evidence of validity by associations of QBA with other welfare indicators. QBA may therefore potentially serve to assess emotional state in polar bears, needing only to be carried out once in the short term. Although the proposed list may benefit from additional validation and reliability testing, this study takes the first step towards a standardised QBA for polar bears.
•We assessed validity of Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA) in zoo-polar bears.•Based on 22 bears, validity was found via association with other welfare indicators.•The QBA (valence scores) showed short-term consistency (within and between days).•QBA provided additional information on emotion that the other indicators did not.
PDF
