The WelFur project aims at the development of on-farm welfare assessment protocols for farmed foxes (the blue fox [Vulpes lagopus], the silver fox [Vulpes vulpes]) and mink (Neovison vison). The WelFur protocols are based on Welfare Quality® (WQ) principles and criteria. Here, we describe the WelFur protocols after two years of developmental work. Reviews for each of the 12 WQ welfare criteria were written for foxes and mink to identify the welfare measures that have been used in scientific studies. The reviews formed the basis for potential measures to be included in the WelFur protocols. All measures were evaluated for their validity, reliability and feasibility. At present, we have identified 15 fox and 9 mink animal-based (or outcome-based) welfare measures, and 11 and 13 input-based (resource-based or management-based) measures. For both foxes and mink, each of the four WQ principles is judged by at least one criterion, and seven out of the 12 criteria include animal-based measures. The protocols will be piloted in 2012. Using the WQ project and protocols as a model has been a fruitful approach in developing the WelFur protocols. The effects of the WelFur protocols will provide benchmarks from which the welfare of animals on European fur farms can be assessed.

To measure farmed foxes' motivations for full, naturalistic social contact, we constructed an apparatus where they could perform an operant to access stimuli, but then leave freely and thence determine their own bout lengths. Motivational measures based on demand curves can be invalid in such set-ups, and we therefore sought to validate the measure 'maximum price paid'. This was achieved by measuring six silver fox males' maximum operant responding for access or proximity to three resources differing in biological significance: food, vixens in oestrus and males. We predicted that if valid, maximum price paid would be highest for food and vixens. Maximum price were 970 AE 399 (S.E.) for food, 677 AE 173 (S.E.) for vixens and 389 AE 101 (S.E.) for other males (P < 0.05). In contrast, our complementary measures of motivation -price elasticity, expenditure and consumer surplus -did not differentiate between the resources, and ranked them in different orders (albeit not significantly). This was because the foxes rescheduled their behaviour with increasing costs, decreasing bout number while increasing bout length, to different extents with the three resources. Additional findings showed that all subjects 'overpaid', performing the operant response more than was required. This increased as the costs increased, perhaps due to increasing 'time outs' on the time-restricted schedule (DRH) as the task got harder. However, the overpayment was also highest when males were the resource, suggesting that operant responding was slowest and least efficient when working for less-valued resources. The resources present also affected how the foxes used the rest of the apparatus and influenced their behaviour; subjects staying more in the operant compartment when the resource was social (especially a female), but retreating to a distant compartment when it was food. While proximity to oestrous vixens elicited higher levels of tail wagging and only low levels of pacing, indicating a positive motivation, proximity to males elicited relatively high levels of pacing plus agonistic gaping, suggesting that the motives for seeking contact with males related to aggression. Thus, although our operant set-up reveals a drive to approach other males, the possible aggressive motives suggest that this sort of social contact would not necessarily improve their welfare in a traditional housing system. Overall, these results help improve the design and interpretation of preference tests, and confirm maximum price paid as a useful motivational measure for farmed foxes. #

There are two main memory systems: declarative and procedural memory. Knowledge of these two systems in fish is scarce, and controlled laboratory studies are needed. Trace classical conditioning is an experimentally tractable model of declarative memory. We tested whether rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) can learn by trace conditioning and form stimulus-stimulus, as opposed to stimulus-response, associations. We predicted that rainbow trout trained by trace conditioning would show appetitive behaviour (conditioned response; CR) towards the conditioned stimulus (CS; light), and that the CR would be sensitive to devaluation of the unconditioned stimulus (US; food). The learning group (L, N = 14) was trained on a CS + US contingency schedule with a trace interval of 3.4 s. The control group (CtrL, N = 4) was kept on a completely random schedule. The fish that learnt were further trained as either an experimental (L, N = 6) or a memory control (CtrM, N = 3) group. The L group had the US devalued. The CtrM group received only food. No fish in the CtrL group, but nine fish from the L group conditioned to the light. When tested, five L fish changed their CRs after US devaluation, indicating learning by stimulus-stimulus association of the light with the food. CtrM fish retained their original CRs. To the best of our knowledge, this experiment is the first to show that rainbow trout can learn by trace classical conditioning. The results indicate that the fish learnt by 'facts-learning' rather than by reflex acquisition in this study.

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