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

农场动物的福利已经成为一个越来越受关注的领域。动物使用者团体提到的一个研究重点是开发更客观的动物福利评估方法。我的建议是通过发展福利评估的新方法来解决这一优先事项。最近的一项概念创新是利用认知功能的变化来评估情感状态。我的研究借用了旨在评估人类抑郁症的实验方法，最近对其进行了修改，以用于动物，我的研究将测试情感状态(如与社会分离相关的状态)的变化对小牛对模棱两可的刺激的反应的影响。可以说，同样重要、更实际的评估是预期行为的变化，这些变化也可能被用来评估主观状态，因此我提出了一系列平行的实验，测试社会分离对预期行为的影响。群居分离模式对小母牛特别相关，因为这些动物通常被关在单独的围栏或马桶里。越来越多的关于老鼠的文献表明，在这种社交隔离水平下饲养动物会导致认知障碍，其特征是记忆和学习任务方面的问题。我提出了一系列测试，评估社会和个人住房对奶牛小牛认知测量的影响；这将是有史以来第一次测试社会隔离对农场动物认知的影响。因此，拟议的实验将有助于研究社会经验对学习的影响的基本文献，并使用学习实验的测量方法来评估与社会隔离相关的福利变化。我的研究将使用机器人喂牛器来训练小牛完成学习任务；这些喂食器在奶牛场变得越来越常见，增加了我的发现未来应用于商业农场的可能性。这笔资金将主要用于科学家的培训，帮助满足对具有动物福利专业知识的学者和专业人员日益增长的需求。

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.