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Validation and Differentiation of Welfare Indicators in Laying Hens

蛋鸡福利指标的验证和区分

基本信息

批准号：
BB/K00042X/1
负责人：
Christine Nicol
金额：
$ 48.93万
依托单位：
University of Bristol
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2014
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2014 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FK00042X%2F1
关键词：
Validation Differentiation Welfare Indicators Laying

项目摘要

Valid measures of animal welfare are required to underpin societal and legislative judgements about how to keep and treat animals. Both scientists conducting experiments to assess factors that might influence farm animal welfare (e.g. stocking density or feed type), and assessors visiting farms on behalf of farm assurance programmes, need practical measures of welfare. It is now accepted that, wherever possible, direct measures of animals should be taken (e.g. health, body condition, locomotion, behaviour) rather than simply measures of the environment animals are in (e.g. space allowance, type of bedding) as it is the impact of the environment on the animal that matters for welfare. Because there is no one measure of good or poor welfare, scientists and assessors often take a wide range of measurements. This can be expensive and time-consuming so it would be useful to develop more refined sets of measurements that could be used in a practical context. Of even greater importance, the validity of many currently-used measures is not well-established. In chickens for example, we may measure the plumage condition, keel-bone deformation, prevalence of hair-line fractures, or even walking abnormalities without knowing whether these are perceived as painful or aversive; and there are similar difficulties in identifying indicators of positive welfare. Thus, to identify practical welfare indicators that can be used in a wide range of situations, we need to establish which are associated with the animals' own perceptions and emotions i.e. which indicators really matter to the animals. In our previous work we validated indicators against hens' own expressed short-term preferences and aversions. This confirmed some useful indicators, threw doubt on the validity of a minority, and resulted in the identification of new indicators. For example, it was not previously known that head-shaking was a reliable indicator of an aversive environment, or that faecal dryness was reliably associated with being in a preferred environment. This information is already being used to improve farm assurance audits. Our original approach works well in the short-term, but cannot be used to validate indicators of long-term welfare, which better reflects lifetime quality of life, because of limitations in how birds express long-term preferences. Our proposed research is thus built on the knowledge that long-term exposure to preferred or non-preferred events or environments can change long-term emotional mood state. Thus, if we cannot validate long-term indicators directly against birds' preferences, we can validate such indicators against the changes in birds' moods that result from long-term exposure to preferred or unpreferred environments. In the first part of our work we will house chickens in environments that are known to be strongly preferred (positive) or unpreferred (negative)in the short-term. We will assess how long-term exposure to these environments influences mood by performing 'cognitive bias' tests, based on our previous work in other species: animals in a positive mood judge situations differently from animals in a negative mood. We will then use statistical methods to describe welfare indicators (measures of behaviour, physiology, health) that are associated with housing in a positive environment and with measures of positive mood, and to describe welfare indicators associated with housing in a negative environment and measures of negative mood. The second part of the programme will be to expose birds to environments that are positive or negative in different ways (e.g. rich in rewards or sparse in punishments) and to see which indicators are good 'general' indicators of positive or negative experience, and which indicators are 'specific' indicators of particular types of positive or negative experience. These results will produce a new generation of practical indicators for use in refined protocols for assessing laying hen welfare.

需要采取有效的动物福利措施，以支持关于如何饲养和对待动物的社会和立法判断。无论是进行实验以评估可能影响农场动物福利的因素（例如放养密度或饲料类型）的科学家，还是代表农场保证方案访问农场的评估员，都需要实际的福利措施。现在人们普遍认为，只要有可能，就应该对动物进行直接测量（例如健康、身体状况、运动、行为），而不是简单地测量动物所处的环境（例如空间允许量、床上用品的类型），因为环境对动物的影响对福利至关重要。由于没有一个衡量福利好坏的标准，科学家和评估人员经常采取各种各样的衡量标准。这可能是昂贵和耗时的，因此开发可以在实际环境中使用的更精细的测量集将是有用的。更重要的是，目前使用的许多措施的有效性还没有得到很好的确定。例如，我们可以测量鸡的羽毛状况、龙骨变形、发际线骨折的发生率，甚至是行走异常，而不知道这些是痛苦的还是令人厌恶的;在确定积极福利的指标方面也有类似的困难。因此，为了确定可用于各种情况的实用福利指标，我们需要确定哪些指标与动物自己的感知和情感有关，即哪些指标对动物真正重要。在我们以前的工作中，我们验证了母鸡自己表达的短期偏好和厌恶的指标。这证实了一些有用的指标，对少数指标的有效性提出了疑问，并导致确定了新的指标。例如，以前不知道摇头是厌恶环境的可靠指标，或者粪便干燥与处于优选环境可靠相关。这些信息已被用于改进农场保证审计。我们最初的方法在短期内效果很好，但不能用于验证长期福利指标，因为鸟类表达长期偏好的方式存在局限性，长期福利指标更能反映终身生活质量。因此，我们提出的研究是建立在长期暴露于偏好或非偏好的事件或环境可以改变长期情绪状态的知识之上的。因此，如果我们不能直接验证长期指标对鸟类的偏好，我们可以验证这些指标对鸟类的情绪变化，导致长期暴露于首选或不首选的环境。在我们工作的第一部分中，我们将鸡饲养在已知在短期内强烈偏好（积极）或不偏好（消极）的环境中。我们将评估长期暴露于这些环境如何影响情绪，通过执行“认知偏差”测试，基于我们以前在其他物种中的工作：积极情绪的动物与消极情绪的动物对情况的判断不同。然后，我们将使用统计方法来描述福利指标（行为，生理，健康的措施），与住房在一个积极的环境和积极的情绪的措施，并描述福利指标与住房在一个消极的环境和措施的消极情绪。该计划的第二部分将是将鸟类暴露在不同方式的积极或消极环境中（例如奖励丰富或惩罚稀疏），并观察哪些指标是积极或消极经验的良好“一般”指标，哪些指标是特定类型的积极或消极经验的“具体”指标。这些结果将产生新一代的实用指标，用于评估产蛋鸡福利的改进方案。