Implementing automated feeders to improve welfare and care of nonhuman primates

 描述(申请人提供)：这项建议旨在通过部署一种真正创新的自动化、计算机控制的喂食设备来可靠地记录和管理生活在繁殖群体中的每一只动物的24/7食物摄入量，从而显著促进畜牧业和对群居恒河猴(Macaca Mulatta)的照顾。在成功地在大小社会群体中安装和使用这些设备后，我们现在提议在耶克斯国家灵长类动物研究中心(YNPRC)的五个特定的无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降低了畜牧业的成本，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，即它们已经在许多物种中得到广泛使用，包括马、牛和狗，既有个体饲养的，也有群居的。我们预计，这些自动化系统将成为全美所有社会安置的非人类灵长类动物群体的标准护理服务。在这项应用中，我们计划利用我们六年来对自动喂养系统的研发，以及YNPRC与Research Diets，Inc.合作开发的新技术，为五个大型社交饲养猕猴群体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摄食行为数据，提供了至少六项与传统饲养方式相比值得注意的优势。具体地说，这些喂食者将：1)通过提供早期警报系统来加强动物的兽医护理和福利，该系统将识别可能需要医疗护理的食欲不振的个体；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)通过使用喂养数据来执行每日群体普查来加快日常饲养活动；4)允许群体管理者识别对过量饮食和肥胖的不利后果更敏感的关键对象，并在不影响社会群体的一般喂养模式的情况下减少肥胖对象的食物摄入量，5)通过减少传统随意投喂方法浪费的食物量，减少食物清理所需的相关劳动，降低恒河猴受试者的护理成本，以及6)提供新的研究途径，特别是这些纯种种群中摄食行为的遗传性。考虑到喂养系统提供的好处，加上我们的初步发现，这项创新技术很可能成为维持大量非人类灵长类群居的“护理标准”。因此，G20应用程序的目标是将这些自动喂食器扩展到五个动物饲养区，包含耶克斯NPRC野战站30%的恒河猴繁殖种群。

 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.