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

农场动物的福利已成为人们日益关注的一个领域。动物使用者群体提出的一个研究重点是开发更客观的评估动物福利的方法。我的建议通过开发新的福利评估方法来解决这一优先事项。最近的一个概念创新是利用认知功能的变化来评估情感状态。借用用于评估人类抑郁的实验方法，最近修改用于动物，我的研究将测试情感状态（例如与社会分离相关的状态）的变化对奶牛小牛对模糊刺激的反应的影响。可以说，同样重要的，更实际的评估是，预期行为的变化也可以用来评估主观状态，所以我提出了一系列平行的实验来测试社会分离对预期行为的影响。社会分离模型与奶牛特别相关，因为这些动物通常被关在单独的围栏或笼子里。越来越多的关于老鼠的文献表明，在这种程度的社会隔离下饲养动物会导致认知缺陷，其特征是记忆和学习任务出现问题。我提出了一系列的测试来评估社会和个人住房对奶牛认知测量的影响；这将是首次测试社会隔离对农场动物认知能力的影响。因此，拟议的实验将有助于关于社会经验对学习的影响的基本文献，并使用学习实验中的措施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犊器来训练小牛学习任务；这些喂食器在奶牛场变得越来越普遍，增加了我的研究结果未来在商业农场应用的潜力。这笔资金将主要用于培训科学家，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.