Search

Objective, non-invasive indicators of the subjective experience of positive emotion are required to support assessment and improvement of animal welfare. Emotion is unique to the individual and indicators of emotion are indirect. The aim of this thesis was to ascertain if body and facial behaviours and physiological parameters reflected the emotional experiences of horses. Following review of the theoretical and experimental literature, three experiments were conducted, and an alternative emotional arousal-valence framework was proposed. Based on the preferences of individual horses, the relative arousal level and emotional valence induced by four stimuli (wither grooming, motionless person, intermittent spray, and being left alone) were ordered. Behavioural and physiological parameters were then measured during exposure to each stimuli. The indicators of contrasting affective experiences in horses were found to be heart rate, heart rate variability, eye temperature, and behaviours involving legs, neck, tail, ears, eyes, eyebrows, mouth, chin, and nares. Several behaviours differed across all three arousal levels or valence levels. Positive emotional valence was indicated by a decreased rate of neck very low, left ear forward, left or right ear back, blink, angled eyebrow, nares flared, nares neutral, and/or an increased rate of chin wobble, small eye aperture, or oral investigation behaviours. Higher arousal was indicated by an increased rate of neck very high, tail swishing, or higher odds of contracted lips, and/or a decreased rate of right ear forward or to the side behaviours. Reduction from 16 to six parameters may be possible. The findings may be used to aid interpretation of horse emotional experience and in the assessment and improvement of horse welfare. The research approach and framework described in this research may be suitable for future research in horses and other species.

Sleep is important for animal health and welfare and there are many factors, for example, the environment, illness, or stress, that are likely to have an impact on cow sleep and consequently affect their welfare. Polysomnography (PSG) is considered the gold standard for precise identification of sleep stages. It consists of electrophysiological recordings of the brain activity, eye movements and muscle activity but is costly and difficult to use with cows on farm. Accordingly, the study of sleep in cows may be limited due to the impracticability of PSG. Alternative methods of assessing sleep have been developed for humans. Some such work has been conducted for cows, but this has yet to be validated with PSG. The main aim of this thesis was to investigate alternative methods to PSG to accurately detect sleep stages in dairy cows. Specifically, I aimed to develop a detailed 5-stage scoring system for assessing sleep stages from the cow PSG, to investigate the suitability of using lying postures and heart rate (HR) measures to assess sleep stages and to develop a model to accurately predict sleep stages using non-invasive measures in dairy cows compared with PSG. Two studies were conducted using 6 non-lactating dairy cows in an indoor housed environment in Scotland, and outdoors at pasture in New Zealand. PSG was recorded with each cow over a period of seven days. From these data a 5-stage sleep-scoring criteria with good reliability was developed which identified two stages of light sleep, two stages of deep sleep as well as awake and rumination stages. Video was recorded during sleep recordings and the cow’s behaviour was analysed and compared with the scored sleep stages from the PSG. Some sleep stages were found to occur mainly in specific lying postures; however, overall, postures were not useful indicators of sleep stages. Heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) were measured using a Polar HR monitor ii and data logging device. Differences in the HR and

Table Manners discusses the reality of food production, gluttony and ignorant consumption within the Western world, through a grotesque and playful lens, using the medium of ceramics. By using horror, the abject and the grotesque, I pose questions that may not be asked directly under “normal” circumstances, as can be too difficult to digest. This paper explores a side of consumption and excess most of us would prefer to ignore and like to pretend it doesn't exist.

Table Manners discusses the reality of food production, gluttony and ignorant consumption within the Western world, through a grotesque and playful lens, using the medium of ceramics. By using horror, the abject and the grotesque, I pose questions that may not be asked directly under “normal” circumstances, as can be too difficult to digest. This paper explores a side of consumption and excess most of us would prefer to ignore and like to pretend it doesn't exist.

2020, 2020 ISAZ. The welfare of aquatic animals is receiving increasing attention around the world, and this should be reflected in the veterinary curricular. Veterinary students in Australia and New Zealand ranked the importance of five pre-selected topics on aquatic animal welfare and ethical issues for newly qualified veterinarians in an online survey. They ranked aquatic animals' health and welfare issues, husbandry techniques of farmed fish, and the use of antibiotics as being of high importance for their first day in practice, with pain and distress associated with angling and trawling practices (fishing) and euthanasia ranking moderate to high. Females assigned more importance to fishing, health and welfare issues, and husbandry techniques of farmed fish than did males. Students in the early stages of study assigned more importance to fishing than did senior students. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to investigate what importance veterinary students place on their competence regarding aquatic animal welfare and ethics. Gaining an understanding of how veterinary students prioritize these issues, and if this differs based on gender and stage of study, will help veterinary educators to better prepare graduates to address concerns surrounding the welfare of aquatic animals. This could be achieved by careful consideration of course content and where in the curriculum this material is taught, as well as reiterating key messages in the senior years and addressing changing student attitudes as they progress through the course.

The importance of animal welfare and ethics (AWE) within the veterinary education should reflect community concerns and expectations about AWE, and the professional demands of veterinary accreditation on the first day of practice (or 'Day One' competences). Currently, much interest and debate surrounds the treatment of production animals, particularly around live export. To explore the attitudes to AWE of veterinary students in Australia and New Zealand, a survey was undertaken to (i) understand what students consider important AWE topics for initial production animal competence; and (ii) ascertain how these priorities correlated with gender, area of intended practice and stage-of-study. The results from 575 veterinary students showed that all students ranked strategies to address painful husbandry procedures as the most important issues on their first day in production animal practice. Additionally, it was found that the importance students assigned to an understanding of human-animal interactions declined as they progressed through the veterinary course. In contrast, the importance of an understanding of euthanasia issues for production animals increased for male students as they progressed through the course, and remained consistently high in females. Females also gave higher ranking to the importance of understanding production animal stress associated with transport, and ranked strategies to address painful husbandry procedures more important than did males. These findings should help the development of AWE teaching resources that address students' attitudes and competence and that can be delivered when students are most receptive.

The study of animal welfare and ethics (AWE) as part of veterinary education is important due to increasing community concerns and expectations about this topic, global pressures regarding food security, and the requirements of veterinary accreditation, especially with respect to Day One Competences. To address several key questions regarding the attitudes to AWE of veterinary students in Australia and New Zealand (NZ), the authors surveyed the 2014 cohort of these students. The survey aimed (1) to reveal what AWE topics veterinary students in Australia and NZ consider important as Day One Competences, and (2) to ascertain how these priorities align with existing research on how concern for AWE relates to gender and stage of study. Students identified triage and professional ethics as the most important Day One Competences in AWE. Students ranked an understanding of triage as increasingly important as they progressed through their program. Professional ethics was rated more important by early and mid-stage students than by senior students. Understanding the development of animal welfare science and perspectives on animal welfare were rated as being of little importance to veterinary graduates as Day One Competences, and an understanding of ''why animal welfare matters'' declined as the students progressed through the program. Combined, these findings suggest that veterinary students consider it more important to have the necessary practical skills and knowledge to function as a veterinarian on their first day in practice.

Objective: To determine what veterinary students in Australia and New Zealand consider important competences in compani on animal welfare and ethics (AWE) required on their first day of practice, and to explore how their priorities relate to gender and stage of study. Methods: Undergraduate students at all veterinary schools in Australia and New Zealand were sent an online survey. A subset of questions required participants to rank the importance of preselected AWE topics pertaining to companion animals. Data were analysed to determine differences in the way students of different gender or academic stage prioritised each of these AWE topics. Results: Of 3220 currently enrolled students, 851 participated in the survey: 79% were female, 17% male, 4% unspecified. Ranking of the AWE topics, from highest to lowest importance, was: neutering, companion animal husbandry, euthanasia, behaviour and training, animal breeding, over-servicing in relation to animal needs and cosmetic surgery. Female students consistently ranked competency in AWE issues surrounding neutering more highly than male students (P = 0.006). Students in senior years of study ranked the importance of competency in animal abuse/hoarding (P = 0.048), shelter medicine (P = 0.012) and animal breeding (P = 0.002) less highly than those in junior years. Conclusions: Australasian veterinary students placed more importance on competency in AWE issues associated with clinical practice (such as neutering and euthanasia) than on professional behaviours (such as over-servicing and animal breeding). However, we consider that emphasis should still be placed on developing graduate competency in the latter categories to reflect growing societal concerns about companion animal over-supply and inappropriate professional conduct.

Historically, the veterinary profession has understood animal welfare primarily in terms of animal health and productivity, with less recognition of animals' feelings and mental state. Veterinary students' career preferences and attitudes to animal welfare have been the focus of several international studies. As part of a survey in Australia and New Zealand, this study reports on whether veterinary students prioritize animal welfare topics or professional conduct on the first day of practice and examines links between students' career preferences and their institution, gender, and year of study. The questionnaire was designed to explore the importance that students assign to topics in animal welfare and ethics. Of the 3,320 students invited to participate in the online survey, a total of 851 students participated, representing a response rate of 25.5%. Students' preferences increased for companion-animal practice and decreased for production-animal practice as they progressed through their studies. Females ranked the importance of animal welfare topics higher than males, but the perceived importance declined for both genders in their senior years. In line with previous studies, this report highlighted two concerns: (1) the importance assigned to animal welfare declined as students progressed through their studies, and (2) males placed less importance overall on animal welfare than females. Given that veterinarians have a strong social influence on animal issues, there is an opportunity, through enhanced education in animal welfare, to improve student concern for animal welfare and in turn improve animal care and policy making by future veterinarians.

The need for undergraduate teaching of Animal Welfare and Ethics (AWE) in Australian and New Zealand veterinary courses reflects increasing community concerns and expectations about AWE, global pressures regarding food security and sustainability, the demands of veterinary accreditation, and fears that, unless students encounter AWE as part of their formal education, as veterinarians they will be relatively unaware of the discipline of animal welfare science. To address this need we are developing online resources to ensure Australian and New Zealand veterinary graduates have the knowledge, and the research, communication and critical reasoning skills, to fulfill the AWE role demanded of them by contemporary society. To prioritize development of these resources we assembled leaders in the field of AWE education from the eight veterinary schools in Australia and New Zealand and used modified deliberative polling. This paper describes the role of the poll in developing the first shared online curriculum resource for veterinary undergraduate learning and teaching in AWE in Australia and New Zealand. The learning and teaching strategies that ranked highest in the exercise were: scenario-based learning, a quality of animal life assessment tool, the so-called 'Human Continuum' discussion platform, and a negotiated curriculum.

Tension-band castration of cattle is gaining favour because it is relatively simple to perform and is promoted by retailers of the devices as a humane castration method. Furthermore, retailers encourage delaying castration to exploit the superior growth rates of bulls compared with steers. Two experiments were conducted, under tropical conditions, comparing tension banding and surgical castration of weaner (7–10 months old) and mature (22–25 months old) Bos indicus bulls with and without pain management (ketoprofen or saline injected intramuscularly immediately prior to castration). Welfare outcomes were assessed using a wide range of measures; this paper reports on the behavioural responses of the bulls and an accompanying paper reports on other measures. Behavioural data were collected at intervals by direct observation and continuously via data loggers on the hind leg of the bulls to 4 weeks post-castration. Tension-banded bulls performed less movement in the crush/chute than the surgically castrated bulls during the procedures (weaner: 2.63 vs. 5.69, P < 0.001; mature: 1.00 vs. 5.94; P < 0.001 for tension-band and surgical castration, respectively), indicating that tension banding was less painful then surgical castration during conduct. To 1.5 h post-castration, tension-banded bulls performed significantly (all P < 0.05) more active behavioural responses indicative of pain compared with surgical castrates, e.g., percentage time walking forwards (weaner: 15.0% vs. 8.1%; mature: 22.3% vs. 15.1%), walking backwards (weaner: 4.3% vs. 1.4%; mature: 2.4% vs. 0.5%), numbers of tail movements (weaner: 21.9 vs. 1.4; mature: 51.5 vs. 39.4) and leg movements (weaner: 12.9 vs. 0.9; mature: 8.5 vs. 1.5), respectively. In contrast, surgically castrated bulls performed more immobile behaviours compared with tension-banded bulls (e.g., standing in mature bulls was 56.6% vs. 34.4%, respectively, P = 0.002). Ketoprofen administration appeared effective in moderating pai

Tension banding castration of cattle is gaining favour because it is relatively simple to perform and is promoted by retailers of the banders as a humane castration method. Two experiments were conducted, under tropical conditions using Bos indicus bulls comparing tension banding (Band) and surgical (Surgical) castration of weaner (7–10 months old) and mature (22–25 months old) bulls with and without pain management (NSAID (ketoprofen) or saline injected intramuscularly immediately prior to castration). Welfare outcomes were assessed using a range of measures; this paper reports on some physiological, morbidity and productivity-related responses to augment the behavioural responses reported in an accompanying paper. Blood samples were taken on the day of castration (day 0) at the time of restraint (0 min) and 30 min (weaners) or 40 min (mature bulls), 2 h, and 7 h; and days 1, 2, 3, 7, 14, 21 and 28 post-castration. Plasmas from day 0 were assayed for cortisol, creatine kinase, total protein and packed cell volume. Plasmas from the other samples were assayed for cortisol and haptoglobin (plus the 0 min sample). Liveweights were recorded approximately weekly to 6 weeks and at 2 and 3 months post-castration. Castration sites were checked at these same times to 2 months post-castration to score the extent of healing and presence of sepsis. Cortisol concentrations (mean ± s.e. nmol/L) were significantly (P < 0.05) higher in the Band (67 ± 4.5) compared with Surgical weaners (42 ± 4.5) at 2 h post-castration, but at 24 h post-castration were greater in the Surgical (43 ± 3.2) compared with the Band weaners (30 ± 3.2). The main effect of ketoprofen was on the cortisol concentrations of the mature Surgical bulls; concentrations were significantly reduced at 40 min (47 ± 7.2 vs. 71 ± 7.2 nmol/L for saline) and 2 h post-castration (24 ± 7.2, vs. 87 ± 7.2 nmol/L for saline). Ketoprofen, however, had no effect on the Band mature bulls, with their cortisol concentrations ave

Tension banding castration of cattle is gaining favour because it is relatively simple to perform and is promoted by retailers of the banders as a humane castration method. Two experiments were conducted, under tropical conditions using Bos indicus bulls comparing tension banding (Band) and surgical (Surgical) castration of weaner (7–10 months old) and mature (22–25 months old) bulls with and without pain management (NSAID (ketoprofen) or saline injected intramuscularly immediately prior to castration). Welfare outcomes were assessed using a range of measures; this paper reports on some physiological, morbidity and productivity-related responses to augment the behavioural responses reported in an accompanying paper. Blood samples were taken on the day of castration (day 0) at the time of restraint (0 min) and 30 min (weaners) or 40 min (mature bulls), 2 h, and 7 h; and days 1, 2, 3, 7, 14, 21 and 28 post-castration. Plasmas from day 0 were assayed for cortisol, creatine kinase, total protein and packed cell volume. Plasmas from the other samples were assayed for cortisol and haptoglobin (plus the 0 min sample). Liveweights were recorded approximately weekly to 6 weeks and at 2 and 3 months post-castration. Castration sites were checked at these same times to 2 months post-castration to score the extent of healing and presence of sepsis. Cortisol concentrations (mean ± s.e. nmol/L) were significantly (P < 0.05) higher in the Band (67 ± 4.5) compared with Surgical weaners (42 ± 4.5) at 2 h post-castration, but at 24 h post-castration were greater in the Surgical (43 ± 3.2) compared with the Band weaners (30 ± 3.2). The main effect of ketoprofen was on the cortisol concentrations of the mature Surgical bulls; concentrations were significantly reduced at 40 min (47 ± 7.2 vs. 71 ± 7.2 nmol/L for saline) and 2 h post-castration (24 ± 7.2, vs. 87 ± 7.2 nmol/L for saline). Ketoprofen, however, had no effect on the Band mature bulls, with their cortisol concentrations ave

Tension-band castration of cattle is gaining favour because it is relatively simple to perform and is promoted by retailers of the devices as a humane castration method. Furthermore, retailers encourage delaying castration to exploit the superior growth rates of bulls compared with steers. Two experiments were conducted, under tropical conditions, comparing tension banding and surgical castration of weaner (7–10 months old) and mature (22–25 months old) Bos indicus bulls with and without pain management (ketoprofen or saline injected intramuscularly immediately prior to castration). Welfare outcomes were assessed using a wide range of measures; this paper reports on the behavioural responses of the bulls and an accompanying paper reports on other measures. Behavioural data were collected at intervals by direct observation and continuously via data loggers on the hind leg of the bulls to 4 weeks post-castration. Tension-banded bulls performed less movement in the crush/chute than the surgically castrated bulls during the procedures (weaner: 2.63 vs. 5.69, P < 0.001; mature: 1.00 vs. 5.94; P < 0.001 for tension-band and surgical castration, respectively), indicating that tension banding was less painful then surgical castration during conduct. To 1.5 h post-castration, tension-banded bulls performed significantly (all P < 0.05) more active behavioural responses indicative of pain compared with surgical castrates, e.g., percentage time walking forwards (weaner: 15.0% vs. 8.1%; mature: 22.3% vs. 15.1%), walking backwards (weaner: 4.3% vs. 1.4%; mature: 2.4% vs. 0.5%), numbers of tail movements (weaner: 21.9 vs. 1.4; mature: 51.5 vs. 39.4) and leg movements (weaner: 12.9 vs. 0.9; mature: 8.5 vs. 1.5), respectively. In contrast, surgically castrated bulls performed more immobile behaviours compared with tension-banded bulls (e.g., standing in mature bulls was 56.6% vs. 34.4%, respectively, P = 0.002). Ketoprofen administration appeared effective in moderating pai