Environmental enrichment to improve behaviour in farm animals.

Abstract

Domestic animals under close confinement conditions frequently display abnormal behaviour, particularly if they are unable to escape from, or adapt to this situation. With the increased interest in domestic farm animal welfare from both the political and societal agendas, environmental enrichment (EE) is becoming an interesting solution, offering an alternative not only to optimize the welfare of the animals but to improve the animals' performance. In general, the development of more intensive production systems and specialized techniques has provided benefits in terms of productivity, but at the expense of the behavioural needs and welfare of kept animals. In intensive farming, welfare concerns are still often related to barren environments and crowded conditions. Producers need to balance the requirements to improve welfare conditions on the farm with practical considerations. This paper provides a review of the scientific literature, focusing on recent advances on the welfare-relevant consequences of EE on harmful social behaviours due to intensively farmed confinement in pigs, laying hens and dairy calves, including a discussion with regard to their relevance and suitability.

Scientific findings related to changes in vascular microcirculation using infrared thermography in the river buffalo

“…Infrared thermography has fostered the development of diverse perspectives on the comparative physiology of such events as thermogenesis, peripheral blood flow, respiratory physiology, and mechanisms for reducing body temperature (Tattersall and Cadena, 2010;Tattersall, 2016;Mota-Rojas et al 2020a). In veterinary medicine, it has been used to monitor and interpret temperature changes in animals caused by the environment (Mota-Rojas et al 2016), in different aspects of the human-animal relationship (Mota-Rojas et al 2020b; Napolitano et al 2019), during environmental enrichment to reduce stress (Orihuela et al 2018), in intensive and extensive systems (Mora-Medina et al 2018a), during allosucking (Mora-Medina et al 2018b), to evaluate animals' physiological responses to high temperatures (Knizkova et al 2007;Paim et al 2013;Mota-Rojas et al 2020a;Guerrero-Legarreta et al 2020), infrared thermal imaging associated with pain in laboratory animal (Mota-Rojas et a 2020c), to measure changes in vascular microcirculation during antemortem processes in stunning of pigs (Flores-Peinado et al 2020), to study skin temperature changes and evaluate mastitis in dairy cows (Colak et al 2008), to analyze changes in the locomotor system sof horses and ruminants (Alsaaod and Büscher, 2012;Stewart et al 2010), and to evaluate the effects of castration on pigs (Pérez-Pedraza et al 2018), among other phenomena. More recently, IRT has been employed to analyze the physiological, reproductive and health processes characteristic of the water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), a species that has been successfully adopted into production systems in tropical regions thanks to its resistance to infectious and parasitic diseases (Angulo et al 2005;Barboza, 2011), and its excellent productive performance (Mota-Rojas et al 2019).…”

The Use of Draught Animals in Rural Labour

“…From a normative perspective, humans are obliged to ensure the quality of life of these animals [ 8 , 9 ], not only because of the value they generate in terms of work, food, and economic income, but also in terms of ethical concerns [ 1 ]. These considerations should provide sufficient incentive to focus on the topic of the welfare of draught animals [ 1 , 10 ].…”

Measuring Calves' Usage of Multiple Environmental Enrichment Objects Provided Simultaneously

“…Unfortunately, these housing systems often do not consider other needs such as grooming or body care (1,2), which are essential to enhance the calves' overall well-being beyond a basic level. Moreover, a monotonous barren environment can induce the occurrence of behavioral problems (i.e., abnormal behavior and redirected behavior) (3).…”

“…Brushes, both automatic and fixed, have been described as a viable alternative that provides sensory and occupational enrichment to animals, promoting the expression of natural behaviors (3,(5)(6)(7). For example, Toaff-Rosenstein et al (15) described how healthy heifers used the brush in body region grooming.…”