Implementing automated feeders to improve welfare and care of nonhuman primates

实施自动喂食器以改善非人类灵长类动物的福利和护理

• 批准号: 8902584
• 负责人: Joyce Kimberly Cohen
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: EMORY UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-03-15 至 2016-03-14
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8902584
• 关键词: Address; Affect; Animal Housing; Animal Husbandry; Animal Welfare; Animals; Area; Breeding; Canis familiaris; Caring; Cattle; Censuses; Computers; Data; Devices; Diet Research; Eating; Equus caballus; Feeding Methods; Feeding Patterns; Feeding behaviors; Food; Goals; Health; Heritability; Housing; Individual; Intervention; Life; Macaca mulatta; Methods; Monitor; Obesity; Population; Predisposition; Primates; Research; Social Welfare; Specific Pathogen Frees; System; Technology; Work; adverse outcome; cost; feeding; germ free condition; improved; innovation; innovative technologies; medical attention; new technology; nonhuman primate; research and development; small social group; social; social group; standard of care; wasting

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is aimed at significantly advancing animal husbandry and the care of socially housed rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) through the deployment of a truly innovative automated, computer-controlled feeding device to reliably record and manage the 24/7 food intake of individual animals living in breeding colonies. Having successfully installed and utilized the devices in both large and small social groups, we now propose to fully establish these systems in five Specific Pathogen Free breeding groups at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center (YNPRC). The establishment of this technology revolutionizes our ability to monitor and improve the health and management of animals, decreases the costs of husbandry by eliminating food waste and reducing feeding-related labor costs, and provides opportunities for addressing important scientific questions that heretofore could not have been adequately investigated in colonies such as this. The many benefits of automated systems are reflected in the fact that they have come into widespread use with many species, including equine, bovine, and canine, housed both individually and in social groups. We anticipate that these automated systems will become the standard of care for all socially-housed non-human primate colonies throughout the US. In this application, we propose to capitalize on our six years of research and development working with automated feeding systems and the new technology developed at YNPRC in partnership with Research Diets, Inc. to deploy computer-controlled automated feeders to five large socially-housed breeding groups of rhesus macaques. This novel technology offers at least six noteworthy advantages over traditional feeding practices by quantifying feeding behavior data of rhesus monkeys living in large social groups. Specifically, these feeders will: 1) Enhance veterinary care and welfare of animals by providing an early-warning alert system that will identify individuals with inappetence that may be in need of medical attention, 2) Predict social instability within groups, allowing intervention sooner than is currently possible with only traditional observational methods, 3) Expedite daily husbandry activities by using feeding data to perform daily group censuses, 4) Allow colony managers to identify key subjects that have an increased susceptibility to over-eating and the adverse consequences of obesity and reduce the food intake of obese subjects without affecting the feeding patterns of the social group at large, 5) Decrease the cost of care for rhesus subjects by reducing the amount of food wasted by traditional ad libitum bin feeding methods, and reducing the associated labor necessary for food clean-up, and 6) Allow new avenues of research, notably the heritability of feeding behavior in these pedigreed populations. Given the benefits provided by the feeding system, together with our preliminary findings, it is likely that this innovative technology will become the "standard-of-care" for maintaining large social colonies of non-human primates. Accordingly, the goal of this G20 application is to expand these automated feeders to five animal housing areas, containing ~30% of the rhesus monkey breeding population at the Yerkes NPRC Field Station.

 描述（由申请人提供）：该提案旨在通过部署真正创新的自动化计算机控制的喂食装置来可靠地记录和管理生活在繁殖群中的个体动物的24/7食物摄入量，从而显著推进畜牧业和社会圈养恒河猴（Macaca mulatta）的护理。在大型和小型社会群体中成功安装和使用这些设备后，我们现在建议在耶基斯国家灵长类动物研究中心（YNPRC）的五个无特定病原体繁殖群体中完全建立这些系统。这项技术的建立彻底改变了我们监测和改善动物健康和管理的能力，通过消除食物浪费和减少与饲养相关的劳动力成本来降低畜牧业成本，并为解决迄今为止在这样的殖民地中无法充分研究的重要科学问题提供了机会。自动化系统的许多好处反映在这样一个事实上，即它们已广泛用于许多物种，包括马、牛和犬，这些物种既单独饲养，也以社会群体的形式饲养。我们预计，这些自动化系统将成为美国所有社会圈养的非人类灵长类动物群体的护理标准。在这项申请中，我们建议利用我们六年的研究和开发工作与自动喂养系统和新技术开发的YNPRC与研究饮食公司合作。为五个大型的社会饲养猕猴繁殖群部署计算机控制的自动喂食器。这项新技术通过量化生活在大型社会群体中的恒河猴的进食行为数据，提供了至少六个值得注意的优势。具体而言，这些馈线将：1）通过提供早期预警警报系统来加强兽医护理和动物福利，该系统将识别可能需要医疗照顾的食欲不振的个体，2）预测群体内的社会不稳定，允许比目前仅使用传统观察方法更快地进行干预，3）通过使用饲养数据进行每日群体普查，加快每日饲养活动，4）允许殖民地管理者确定对过度-饮食和肥胖的不良后果，并减少肥胖受试者的食物摄入量而不影响整个社会群体的进食模式，5）通过减少由传统的随意投喂方法浪费的食物量来降低恒河猴受试者的护理成本，并减少了食物清理所需的相关劳动力，以及6）允许新的研究途径，特别是这些纯种人群中喂养行为的遗传性。考虑到喂养系统提供的好处，再加上我们的初步发现，这项创新技术很可能成为维持非人类灵长类动物大型社会群体的“护理标准”。因此，该G20应用的目标是将这些自动喂食器扩展到五个动物饲养区，包含Yerkes NPRC野外站约30%的恒河猴繁殖种群。