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Agriculture
Special Issues
Ethology and Animal Welfare
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Ethology and Animal Welfare

A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2018) | Viewed by 28920

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Marie-Christine Meunier-Salaün

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
INRA-AgroCampus Ouest, UMR1348-PEGASE 16 Le Clos, 35590 Saint-Gilles, France
Interests: animal behavior; animal welfare; cognition; emotion; human–animal relationships; livestock precision farming

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The motivation behind this Agriculture Special Issue is to highlight the key challenges of ethology science to provide knowledge and opportunities in animal production communities to face the animal welfare issues. The four Tinbergen's questions on the proximal and ultimate causes, the ontogeny and the phylogeny of behaviors, applied in research on farm animals, provide comprehensive view of the whole organism, the specific behavioural needs and the subjective experiences. Moreover, the enlarged cross-domain interactions between the ethology closely related to other scientific disciplines, such as physiology, pathology, health, immunology, endocrinology, neuroscience and genetic, and applied areas, such as ergonomic and livestock precision farming, are major opportunities for the stakeholders involved in the animal productions to take into account the animal welfare in the evolution of housing, equipment and management practices. In this Special Issue, we will welcome articles on how the concepts and methods used to study animal behavior (from ethology or interdisciplinary approaches) contribute to a greater understanding of animal welfare and to its quantitative and qualitative assessment. Articles addressing practical issues in agriculture in responses to ethical, economic and political dimensions of animal welfare issues are also welcome.

Dr. Marie-Christine Meunier-Salaün
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agriculture is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Tinbergen's four questions echoing animal welfare issues
  • Functioning of behavioural systems
  • Natural living and adaptations to livestock contexts
  • Subjectives experiences
  • Social behaviour/human–animal interactions
  • Ethology and Human social sciences
  • Ethology challenges in Precision Livestock Farming
  • Animal welfare assessment
  • Genetic and behaviour

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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11 pages, 213 KiB  
Article
Identification of Suitable Animal Welfare Assessment Measures for Extensive Beef Systems in New Zealand
by Y. Baby Kaurivi, Richard Laven, Rebecca Hickson, Kevin Stafford and Tim Parkinson
Agriculture 2019, 9(3), 66; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture9030066 - 25 Mar 2019
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 5547
Abstract
Farm animal welfare assessment protocols use different measures depending on production systems and the purpose of the assessment. There is no standardized validated animal welfare protocol for the assessment of beef cattle farms in New Zealand, despite the importance of beef exports to [...] Read more.
Farm animal welfare assessment protocols use different measures depending on production systems and the purpose of the assessment. There is no standardized validated animal welfare protocol for the assessment of beef cattle farms in New Zealand, despite the importance of beef exports to the country. The aim of this study was therefore to identify welfare measures that would be suitable for an animal welfare assessment protocol for use in extensive pasture-based cow–calf beef cattle systems in New Zealand. The proposed animal welfare assessment measures were selected from the Welfare Quality protocol and the rangeland-based UC Davis Cow–Calf Health and Handling assessment protocol. Measures that were deemed impractical and/or unsuitable were excluded from the protocol. After testing the applicability of selected measures at one farm, additional measures that were deemed to be practical to undertake in New Zealand were identified and incorporated into the protocol. The intention was to identify animal welfare indicators that were assessable in the yard during a single farm visit, a questionnaire guided interview, and a farm resource assessment visit that evaluated cattle health and management. Further testing of the 50 measures that were identified as being appropriate will be undertaken on commercial beef farms to develop a practicable welfare protocol for extensive pasture-based beef systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethology and Animal Welfare)
11 pages, 1986 KiB  
Article
Increasing of Posture Changes as Indicator of Imminent Calving in Dairy Cows
by Marisanna Speroni, Massimo Malacarne, Federico Righi, Piero Franceschi and Andrea Summer
Agriculture 2018, 8(11), 182; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture8110182 - 20 Nov 2018
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 4322
Abstract
The careful monitoring of cows helps minimise pain and distress during calving; moreover, knowing the exact time of birth is important to ensure timely assistance and the adequate ingestion of colostrum by the calf. However, direct visual observation is time-consuming, and the continuous [...] Read more.
The careful monitoring of cows helps minimise pain and distress during calving; moreover, knowing the exact time of birth is important to ensure timely assistance and the adequate ingestion of colostrum by the calf. However, direct visual observation is time-consuming, and the continuous presence of an observer during stage two of calving can disturb cows. Video cameras or accelerometers recording the behaviour of cows can be integrated in systems using image analysis or locomotive activity to alert the farmer as to when calving is imminent. However, alerting systems require the input of benchmark information about behaviours and changes in behaviours that can be predictive of the time of calving. Eight cows in a calving barn were continuously video-monitored. The recordings of the 24 h before delivery were analysed by instantaneous time sampling to identify the behaviours associated with an imminent birth. The same were collected in an ethogram including lying, standing, walking, turning the head towards the abdomen, eating, ruminating, drinking, sniffing the ground, allogrooming, self-grooming, and posture-changing. In our conditions, the only behaviour that was significantly influenced by the distance to delivery was posture-changing (p < 0.0001). Two h before the delivery, the proportion of posture changes was different from all of the hourly proportions measured from −24 to −3 h relative to delivery (p < 0.005), resulting in 3.6 times the average of the previous 22 h relative to delivery. An increase of posture changes may be an indicator of calving approaching, but further studies are needed to input benchmark values in alerting systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethology and Animal Welfare)
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8 pages, 19567 KiB  
Communication
“Naturalness” and Its Relation to Animal Welfare from an Ethological Perspective
by Lorenz Gygax and Edna Hillmann
Agriculture 2018, 8(9), 136; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture8090136 - 3 Sep 2018
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 5754
Abstract
Here we view naturalness from the point of view of proximate behavioural control. The mechanisms of behaviour control have evolved in order that animals reach a specific goal after they have performed motivated behaviour. This goal was closely related to a function at [...] Read more.
Here we view naturalness from the point of view of proximate behavioural control. The mechanisms of behaviour control have evolved in order that animals reach a specific goal after they have performed motivated behaviour. This goal was closely related to a function at the time when the mechanism evolved. Function and goal may be de-coupled in a novel environment such as artificial housing conditions. We argue that an animal that can perform the behaviour it wants and can reach the goals it likes can behave according to what is “in-its-nature” even under human influenced conditions. We illustrate this argument using abnormal sucking behaviour in calves and piglets as well as dehorning in cattle and goats. We conclude that a minimal welfare standard is ensured for animals that are given the opportunity to behave as is in-their-nature. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethology and Animal Welfare)
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18 pages, 266 KiB  
Discussion
Why Pain Is Still a Welfare Issue for Farm Animals, and How Facial Expression Could Be the Answer
by Krista Marie McLennan
Agriculture 2018, 8(8), 127; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture8080127 - 11 Aug 2018
Cited by 42 | Viewed by 12277
Abstract
Pain is a sensory and emotional experience that significantly affects animal welfare and has negative impacts on the economics of farming. Pain is often associated with common production diseases such as lameness and mastitis, as well as introduced to the animal through routine [...] Read more.
Pain is a sensory and emotional experience that significantly affects animal welfare and has negative impacts on the economics of farming. Pain is often associated with common production diseases such as lameness and mastitis, as well as introduced to the animal through routine husbandry practices such as castration and tail docking. Farm animals are prey species which tend not to overtly express pain or weakness, making recognizing and evaluating pain incredibly difficult. Current methods of pain assessment do not provide information on what the animal is experiencing at that moment in time, only that its experience is having a long term negative impact on its behavior and biological functioning. Measures that provide reliable information about the animals’ affective state in that moment are urgently required; facial expression as a pain assessment tool has this ability. Automation of the detection and analysis of facial expression is currently in development, providing further incentive to use these methods in animal welfare assessment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethology and Animal Welfare)
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