Qualitative Behavioural Assessment of Angus steers during pre-slaughter handling and relationship with temperament and physiological responses

Stockman, C.; McGilchrist, P.; Collins, Teresa; Barnes, Anne; Miller, David; Wickham, Sarah L.; Greenwood, P. L.; Café, L. M.; Blache, Dominique; Wemelsfelder, Françoise; Fleming, Patricia A.

doi:10.1016/j.applanim.2012.10.016

Cited by 58 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 35 publications

(43 reference statements)

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“…A growing body of empirical evidence acquired from studies employing the methodology of qualitative behavioural assessment indicates that aspects of the animal's demeanour are indicative of affective state Rousing and Wemelsfelder 2006;Brscic et al 2009;Stockman et al 2011Stockman et al , 2012Napolitano et al 2012;Rutherford et al 2012). Wechsler and Lea (2007) have suggested that speed with which the animal learns to respond to new environmental cues is an overlooked indicator of cognitive ability and adaptation by learning in farm animals.…”

Section: Defining the Phenotypementioning

confidence: 99%

Resilience in farm animals: biology, management, breeding and implications for animal welfare

2016

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Abstract.A capacity for the animal to recover quickly from the impact of physical and social stressors and disease challenges is likely to improve evolutionary fitness of wild species and welfare and performance of farm animals. Salience and valence of stimuli sensed through neurosensors, chemosensors and immunosensors are perceived and integrated centrally to generate emotions and engage physiological, behavioural, immune, cognitive and morphological responses that defend against noxious challenges. These responses can be refined through experience to provide anticipatory and learned reactions at lower cost than innate less-specific reactions. Influences of behaviour type, coping style, and affective state and the relationships between immune responsiveness, disease resistance and resilience are reviewed. We define resilience as the capacity of animals to cope with short-term perturbations in their environment and return rapidly to their pre-challenge status. It is manifested in response to episodic, sporadic or situation-specific attributes of the environment and can be optimised via facultative learning by the individual. It is a comparative measure of differences between individuals in the outcomes that follow exposure to potentially adverse situations. In contrast, robustness is the capacity to maintain productivity in a wide range of environments without compromising reproduction, health and wellbeing. Robustness is manifested in response to persistent or cyclical attributes of the environment and is effected via activity of innate regulatory pathways. We suggest that for farm animals, husbandry practices that incorporate physical and social stressors and interactions with humans such as weaning, change of housing, and introduction to the milking parlour can be used to characterise resilience phenotypes. In these settings, resilience is likely to be more readily identified through the rate of return of variables to pre-challenge or normal status rather than through measuring the activity of diverse stress response and adaptation mechanisms. Our strategy for phenotyping resilience of sheep and cattle during weaning is described. Opportunities are examined to increase resilience through genetic selection and through improved management practices that provide emotional and cognitive enrichment and stress inoculation.Additional keywords: affective state, allostasis, animal behaviour, animal temperament, animal welfare, disease resistance, genetic selection, homeostasis, resilience, robustness, stress inoculation.

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Section: Defining the Phenotypementioning

confidence: 99%

Resilience in farm animals: biology, management, breeding and implications for animal welfare

2016

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“…A field study was designed to attempt to validate the marketing claims made by the proponents of the product by measuring the impacts of feeding winery by-products on beef cattle flight speed (FS), a quantitative behavioural assessment tool which has been widely used as a measure of beef cattle temperament and has been correlated with weight gain in cattle (Muller & von Keyserlingk, 2006;Petherick et al, 2009;Schwartzkopf-Genswein et al, 2012;Stockman et al, 2012). After animal weights were recorded and cattle ID was determined via Radio-Frequency identification tags (RFID) tags, the flight speed of cattle was evaluated.…”

Section: Flight Speedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Fermented Winery By-Product Supplemented Rations on the Temperament and Meat Quality of Angus-Hereford X Steers During Feeding in a British Columbia Feedlot

Moote¹,

Church

Schwartzkopf-Genswein³

et al. 2014

JFR

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Novel value-added beef products provide improved product differentiation within the beef marketplace. This study evaluated the impacts of supplementing feeds with fermented winery by-products (WB) to produce the novel beef product labeled by industry as "wine-finished beef". To evaluate the impact of this feed, a total of 69 Angus-Hereford X steers were placed in four pens (n=18,17,17,17), one replicate pen per treatment, and fed finishing rations containing equal amounts of either 6-7% WB or 6-7% water (Control; C) over a 143 day feeding period. Dietary treatments were not significantly different with respect to energy or chemical contents (P > 0.05). Interestingly, the average daily gains (ADG; kg*d -1 ) of cattle did not differ between diets (P > 0.05); however, the ADG of all beef cattle changed over the feeding period (P < 0.0041). Cattle temperament, evaluated by measuring their flight speed, changed over time (P = 0.0097), but not between diets (P = 0.6938). Meat quality attributes including chemical, colour, and tenderness properties did not differ (P > 0.05) between diets with the exception of ground steak, which was darker (P = 0.0477) in cattle fed WB compared to C supplemented feeds, respectively. Supplementing cattle feeds with WB provides a new marketing stream for beef products with no observed differences to cattle behaviour, animal gains or meat tenderness.

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“…In detailed reviews the value of observer assessments (when used in careful experimental design) in investigating animal welfare are described (Wemelsfelder 1997;Meagher 2009). Of particular interest are studies correlating human assessment of an animal's emotional experience with physical and physiological measures of stress in animals (Minero et al 2009;Stockman et al 2012), inferring some verisimilitude in human assessment of animals' emotional experiences.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Emotional Lives of Companion Animals: Attachment and Subjective Claims by Owners of Cats and Dogs

2016

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There is a growing body of scientific evidence supporting the existence of emotions in nonhuman animals. Companion-animal owners show a strong connection and attachment to their animals and readily assign emotions to them. In this paper we present information on how the attachment level of companion-animal owners correlates with their attribution of emotions to their companion cat or dog and their attribution of mirrored emotions. The results of an online questionnaire, completed by 1,023 Dutch-speaking cat and/or dog owners (mainly in the Netherlands and Belgium), suggest that owners attribute several emotions to their pets. Respondents attributed all posited basic (anger, joy [happiness], fear, surprise, disgust, and sadness) and complex (shame, jealousy, disappointment, and compassion) emotions to their companion animals, with a general trend toward basic emotions (with the exception of sadness) being more commonly attributed than complex emotions. All pet owners showed strong attachment to their companion animal(s), with the degree of attachment (of both cat and dog owners) varying significantly with education level and gender. Owners who ascribed human characteristics to their dog or cat also scored higher on the Pet Bonding Scale (PBS). Finally, owners who found it pleasant to pet their dog or cat had a higher average PBS score than those who did not like to do so. The relationship between owners' attributions of mirrored emotions and the degree of attachment to dogs was significant for all emotions, whilst for cats this relationship was significant only for joy, sadness, surprise, shame, disappointment, and compassion.

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Qualitative Behavioural Assessment of Angus steers during pre-slaughter handling and relationship with temperament and physiological responses

Cited by 58 publications

References 35 publications

Resilience in farm animals: biology, management, breeding and implications for animal welfare

Resilience in farm animals: biology, management, breeding and implications for animal welfare

Effect of Fermented Winery By-Product Supplemented Rations on the Temperament and Meat Quality of Angus-Hereford X Steers During Feeding in a British Columbia Feedlot

The Emotional Lives of Companion Animals: Attachment and Subjective Claims by Owners of Cats and Dogs

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