Qualitative behavioural assessment of the motivation for feed in sheep in response to altered body condition score

Stockman, C.; Collins, Teresa; Barnes, Anne; Miller, David; Wickham, Sarah L.; Verbeek, Else; Matthews, Lindsay R.; Ferguson, D. M.; Wemelsfelder, Françoise; Fleming, Patricia A.

doi:10.1071/an13020

Cited by 18 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…Sustained adverse environmental conditions such as heat or cold, and low body mass during periods of limited feed availability or when body reserves are being used to support lactation impose substantial stress on farm animals (Bell and Bauman 1997;Collier et al 2009;Sordillo and Mavangira 2014). Studies using operant conditioning show that animals will work hard to alleviate heat stress and undernutrition and suggest that these stresses create negative affective states (Roberts 2007;Roche et al 2009;Stockman et al 2014). The contribution of negative affective states to the impact of these common production stressors on the animal is an issue deserving more attention.…”

Section: Influences Of Affective Statesmentioning

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: Influences Of Affective Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2016

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“…We used the first available footage of the animal within the first 30 min of the test where the sheep was clearly in view. The experimental 'cost distances' (see above) were based on the available footage and were either 6.9 or 13.2 m (BCS 2 n = 6, 2; BCS 3 n = 6, 2; BCS 4 n = 5, 1) but had no effect on the QBA results (Stockman et al, 2014).…”

Section: Study Protocolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Details of the larger experimental project from which the procedures for the present study were derived are available elsewhere (Verbeek et al, 2011;Stockman et al, 2014). Briefly, footage of 22 pregnant Coopworth ewes (91 to 105 days gestation) of three body condition scores (BCS; with increasing BCS reflecting a sheep's increasing condition, i.e.…”

Section: Study Protocolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The sensitivity of QBA assessments of sheep behavioural expression to variations in visual or verbal information provided to observers

Fleming

Wickham

Stockman

et al. 2015

Animal

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Qualitative behavioural assessment (QBA) is based on observers' ability to capture the dynamic complexity of an animal's demeanour as it interacts with the environment, in terms such as tense, anxious or relaxed. Sensitivity to context is part of QBA's integrative capacity and discriminatory power; however, when not properly managed it can also be a source of undesirable variability and bias. This study investigated the sensitivity of QBA to variations in the visual or verbal information provided to observers, using free-choice profiling (FCP) methodology. FCP allows observers to generate their own descriptive terms for animal demeanour, against which each animal's expressions are quantified on a visual analogue scale. The resulting scores were analysed with Generalised Procrustes Analysis (GPA), generating two or more multi-variate dimensions of animal expression. Study 1 examined how 63 observers rated the same video clips of individual sheep during land transport, when these clips were interspersed with two different sets of video footage. Scores attributed to the sheep in the two viewing sessions correlated significantly (GPA dimension 1: r s = 0.95, P < 0.001, GPA dimension 2: r s = 0.66, P = 0.037) indicating that comparative rankings of animals on expressive dimensions were highly similar, however, their mean numerical scores on these dimensions had shifted (RM-ANOVA: Dim1: P < 0.001, Dim2: P < 0.001). Study 2 investigated the effect of being given different amounts of background information on two separate groups of observers assessing footage of 22 individual sheep in a behavioural demand facility. One group was given no contextual information regarding this facility, whereas the second group was told that animals were moving towards and away from a feeder (in view) to access feed. Scores attributed to individual sheep by the two observer groups correlated significantly (Dim1: r s = 0.92, P < 0.001, Dim2: r s = 0.52, P = 0.013). A number of descriptive terms were generated by both observer groups and used in similar ways, other terms were unique to each group. The group given additional information about the experimental facility scored the sheep's behaviour as more 'directed' and 'focused' than observers who had not been told. Thus, in neither of the two studies did experimentally imposed variations in context alter the characterisations of animals relative to each other, but in Study 1 this did affect the mean numerical values underlying these characterisations, indicating a need for careful attention to the use of visual analogue scales.Keywords: free-choice profiling, generalised Procrustes analysis (GPA), qualitative behaviour assessment (QBA), sheep, visual analogue scale ImplicationsAnimal welfare assessment requires tools that are sufficiently sensitive to detect subtle changes in an animal's state. QBA is a methodology that, given its integrative nature, may pick up on subtle changes in an animal's expressive demeanour and thus make a valuable contribution to animal welfare studies.However, the...

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“…These data are analysed by Generalised Procrustes Analysis (GPA), which identifies common patterns in the use of descriptive terms, followed by a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to simplify the data into two or three main dimensions. QBA scores generated through the FCP methodology have been validated against physiological parameters (Stockman et al, 2011;2012;Wickham et al, 2012; as well as quantitative behavioural measurements (Napolitano et al, 2008;Stockman et al, 2014). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are observer ratings influenced by prescription? A comparison of Free Choice Profiling and Fixed List methods of Qualitative Behavioural Assessment

Clarke

Pluske

Fleming

2016

Applied Animal Behaviour Science

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Tel: +61 8 93606577Running head: comparing two methods of rater scales for behaviour assessment Word count: 5,300 words Highlights: Reliability of rater assessments depends on understanding how observers apply descriptive terms. We compared two methodologies, Fixed List (FL) and Free Choice Profiling. Observers reached consensus using either FL or FCP methods. There were correlations in scores attributed to groups of sows between FL and FCP. Training is an important aspect of reliability of rater assessments.Abstract. Qualitative methods of behavioural assessment use observer rating scales to score the overall demeanour or body language of animals. Establishing the reliability of such holistic approaches requires test and validation of the methods used. Here, we compare two methodologies used in Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA): Fixed-Lists (FL) and Free-Choice Profiling (FCP). A laboratory class of 27 students was separated into two groups of 17 and 10 students (FL and FCP respectively). The FL group were given a list of 20 descriptive terms (used by the European Union's Welfare Quality ® program), shown videos of group-housed sows, and as a group discussed how they would apply the descriptive terms in an assessment. The FCP group were shown the same footage but individually generated their own descriptive terms to describe body language of the animals. Both groups were then shown 18 video clips of group-housed sows and scored each clip using a visual analogue scale (VAS) system. We analysed the VAS scores using Generalised Procrustes Analysis (GPA) for each observer group separately, which indicated high inter-observer reliability for both groups (FL: 71.1% of scoring variation explained, and FCP: 63.5%). There were significant correlations between FL and FCP scores (GPA dimension 1: r 16 =0.946, P<0.001, GPA dimension 2: r 16 =0.477, P=0.045). Additional analysis of the raw VAS scores for the FL group by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) produced four factors; PC1 scores were correlated with GPA1 (r 16 =0.984, P<0.001) and PC3 scores correlated with GPA2 (r 16 =0.880, P<0.001).Kendall's coefficient of concordance (a measure of observer agreement) of the VAS scores indicated statistically significant agreement in use of the 20 descriptive terms (W range 0.37-0.64; all significant at P<0.001, although a value of W >0.7 is usually accepted to show strong agreement). This study demonstrates that, regardless of whether they are given their terms or are allowed to generate their own, observers score sow body language in a similar way. Strengths and weaknesses within the two methods were identified, which highlight the importance of providing thorough and consistent training of observers, including providing good quality training footage so that the full repertoire of demeanours can be identified.

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Qualitative behavioural assessment of the motivation for feed in sheep in response to altered body condition score

Cited by 18 publications

References 34 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

The sensitivity of QBA assessments of sheep behavioural expression to variations in visual or verbal information provided to observers

Are observer ratings influenced by prescription? A comparison of Free Choice Profiling and Fixed List methods of Qualitative Behavioural Assessment

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