New approaches to welfare assessment in dairy calves: effects of social housing on cognition, cognitive bias and anticipatory behaviour

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The welfare of farm animals has become an area of increasing concern. A research priority cited by animal-user groups is the development of more objective methods of assessment of animal welfare. My proposal addresses this priority by developing new methods for welfare assessment. One recent conceptual innovation has been to use changes in cognitive functioning to assess affective states. Borrowing on experimental approaches designed to assess depression in humans, recently modified for use in animals, my research will test the effects of changes in affective states (such as those associated with social separation) on how dairy calves respond to ambiguous stimuli. Arguably equally important, and more practical to assess, are changes in anticipatory behaviours that may also be used to assess subjective states, so I propose a parallel series of experiments testing the effects of social separation on anticipatory behaviour. The social separation model is particularly relevant for dairy calves, as these animals are typically housed in individual pens or hutches. A growing body of literature on rats suggests that rearing animals with this level of social isolation can result in cognitive deficits, characterized by problems in memory and learning tasks. I propose a series of tests assessing the effects of social and individual housing on measures of cognition in dairy calves; these will be the first ever tests of the effects social isolation on cognition in farm animals. Thus the proposed experiments will contribute to the basic literature on the effects of social experience on learning, and use measures from learning experiments to assess changes in welfare associated with social isolation. My research will use robotic calf feeders to train calves in learning tasks; these feeders are becoming common on dairy farms, increasing the potential for future application of my findings on commercial farms. The funding will be largely devoted towards the training of scientists, helping to meet a growing demand for academics and professionals with expertise in animal welfare.