Test–retest reliability of the Welfare Quality Assessment protocol for pigs applied to sows and piglets. Part 2. Assessment of the principles good feeding, good housing, and good health1

Abstract

The present study aimed at testing the feasibility and on-farm test-retest reliability of the Welfare Quality Assessment protocol for pigs applied to sows and piglets. The study was conducted on 13 farms in Northern Germany, which were visited 5 times by the same observer, and included 2 experimental setups: first, the complete Welfare Quality Assessment protocol for sows and piglets was applied to the farms. Second, additional assessments in the gestation unit considered all sows. The complete protocol assessments were used to evaluate the feasibility of the protocol. Furthermore, the data were analyzed with regard to on-farm test-retest reliability. The present publication focuses on the Welfare Quality principles good feeding, good housing, and good health, which are based on individual indicators (IN). The second experimental setup was utilized to verify the test-retest reliability of IN in the gestation unit with an increased number of animals under assessment. The test-retest reliability was calculated using Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (RS), intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), smallest detectable change (SDC), and limits of agreement (LoA). Farm visit 1 (F1; day 0) was set as a reference and compared with farm visits 2 to 5 (F2 to 5; day 3, week 7, month 5, month 10). The IN of the above-named Welfare Quality principles achieved mostly acceptable test-retest reliability (e.g., wounds on the body F1 to F4: RS 0.34 to 0.57, ICC 0.40 to 0.41, SDC 0.02 to 0.12, LoA [−0.03; 0.02] to [−0.09; 0.14]) in terms of the on-farm test-retest reliability. Poor test-retest reliability was detected for body condition score concerning the principle good feeding, for bursitis and panting in sows and for huddling and panting in piglets within the principle good housing, and finally for vulva lesions, metritis, and local infections in sows and for scouring and lameness in piglets in the principle good health. Variations among the farm visits, which resulted in poor test-retest reliability, may be explained by seasonal effects (panting), moving animals (bursitis, lameness, huddling), rare occurrences of diseases (metritis, local infections, scouring), and differently conditioned sow groups (body condition score). The second experimental setup confirmed the results for IN in the gestation unit. Thus, the reported test-retest reliability determines the Welfare Quality Assessment protocol for sows and piglets to be a reliable approach to assess welfare in sows and piglets.

Test−Retest Reliability of the ‘Welfare Quality® Animal Welfare Assessment Protocol for Sows and Piglets’. Part 1. Assessment of the Welfare Principle of ‘Appropriate Behavior’

“…This paper focusses on the evaluation of the test−retest reliability of the welfare principle of ‘appropriate behavior’ as described in the protocol. The results on the remaining principles (‘good feeding’, ‘good housing’, and ‘good health’) are published in Friedrich et al [16]. Consequently, the present study contributes to the development of an objective assessment system for animal welfare in sows and piglets, which may be used for certification purposes.…”

“…However, the subjective definition of threshold values remains somewhat difficult. For this reason, the threshold values of the present study were oriented towards existing reliability studies [10,16,29,30] and defined as advised by de Vet et al [20].…”

“…The categories of the ISS, HAR, and ST were analyzed individually and independently. While the categories are not independent as each animal was placed in a single category, the chosen approach was used to reveal differences between defined categories and to ensure comparability with studies on the test−retest reliability of the Welfare Quality ® protocol for growing pigs performed by Temple et al [10] and by Czycholl et al [29] and on the test−retest reliability of the Welfare Quality ® protocol for sows and piglets performed by Friedrich et al [16].…”

Application of Principal Component Analysis of Sows' Behavioral Indicators of the Welfare Quality® Protocol to Determine Main Components of Behavior

“…One of the Welfare Quality R protocol's behavioral indicators, the human-animal relationship test, did not significantly load on the components detected but only achieved loadings of 0.13 and 0.03, respectively. Hence, taking into account the fact that the Welfare Quality R protocols have been criticized for their lack of feasibility (Friedrich et al, 2019b), it may be possible to reduce the Welfare Quality R protocol for sows and piglets by eliminating this indicator.…”

“…Even though the Welfare Quality R protocols are a representative example of an objective welfare assessment system, the protocols are commonly criticized for their lack of feasibility (Czycholl et al, 2016b;Friedrich et al, 2019b). In this context, the assessment of behavioral indicators in particular is said to be time-consuming (Rushen et al, 2012).…”