Welfare Assessment

Alone or together: A risk assessment approach to group housing

The question of whether it is better to house animals in groups rather than alone deals with the unresolved issues at the heart of animal welfare. In particular, we need to be able to rank different classes of threats to...

Year Published: 2014Topics: Social Housing & Companionship, Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: All/General, Cattle

Citation: Rushen, J., de Passillé, A. M., Appleby, M. C. et al. 2014. Alone or together: A risk assessment approach to group housing. In: Dilemmas in Animal Welfare. Appleby, M. C., Weary, D. M., Sandøe, P. (eds), 169-187. CAB International, Oxfordshire, UK.

The time-to-integrate-to-nest test as an indicator of wellbeing in laboratory mice

Minimizing and alleviating pain and distress in laboratory mice without compromising the methodologic integrity of research is a crucial goal. However, current methods for welfare assessment in mice are not well suited to cageside checks. In the present study, we...

Year Published: 2014Topics: Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: Mouse, Rodent

Citation: Rock, M. L., Rodriguez, K., Karas, A. Z. et al. 2014. The time-to-integrate-to-nest test as an indicator of wellbeing in laboratory mice. JAALAS 53(1), 24-28.

Do singly housed male mice get lonely? Evidence of depressive states after short-term single housing of BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice

Through behavioral and preference studies we know that mice prefer company. Laboratory mice should thus never be housed alone, if a viable option exists. Yet single housing is a fairly common practice, in particular with male mice, because an experimental...

Year Published: 2014Topics: Social Housing & Companionship, Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: Mouse, Rodent

Citation: Kalliokoski, O., Teilmann, A. C., Jacoben, K. R. et al. 2014. Do singly housed male mice get lonely? Evidence of depressive states after short-term single housing of BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice. American Association for Laboratory Animal Science [AALAS] Meeting Official Program, 597. (Abstract #P184).

Assessing the emotions of laboratory rats

Rats are one of the most commonly used species in research, and decades of testing have yielded a large amount of information pertaining to their experience of emotion. The aim of this review is to bring together information on rat...

Year Published: 2013Topics: Emotion, Pain, & Sentience, Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: Rat, Rodent

Citation: Makowska, I. J., Weary, D. M. 2013. Assessing the emotions of laboratory rats. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 148, 1-12.

Use of spontaneous behaviour measures to assess pain in laboratory rats and mice: How are we progressing?

The understanding and recognition of pain in laboratory rats and mice has advanced considerably in recent times. However, there is evidence that despite these advances, analgesics are still relatively underutilised in these species. One possible contributing influence to this is...

Year Published: 2014Topics: Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: Mouse, Rat, Rodent

Citation: Whittaker, A. L., Howarth, G. S. 2014. Use of spontaneous behaviour measures to assess pain in laboratory rats and mice: How are we progressing? Applied Animal Behaviour Science 151, 1-12.

Behavioral ethogram as a health assessment tool in a feline vaccine study

For infectious disease studies, assessment of feline health is traditionally limited to metrics such as body temperature (BT), change in body weight (BW), and clinical signs (CS). Recently, behavioral ethograms designed for assessment of rabbits and rodents were demonstrated to...

Year Published: 2014Topics: Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: Cat

Citation: Burlingame, L. A., Na, J., Dunbar, M. et al. 2014. Behavioral ethogram as a health assessment tool in a feline vaccine study. American Association for Laboratory Animal Science [AALAS] Meeting Official Program, 610. (Abstract #P227).

Investigating the motivation to play in lambs

The aim of this study was to identify behaviours and ear postures linked to the appetitive, consummatory and post-consummatory motivational phases of play in male lambs, and to evaluate how cortisol was affected by play. Ten pairs of male lambs,...

Year Published: 2014Topics: Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: Sheep

Citation: Chapagain, D., Uvns-Moberg, K., Lidfors, L. M. 2014. Investigating the motivation to play in lambs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 160, 64-74.

Can ear postures reliably measure the positive emotional state of cows?

Animal welfare science is increasingly concerned with the promotion of positive emotions in animals, yet little is known about how to measure them. We examined whether ear postures in dairy cows were reliable indicators of a low arousal, positive emotional...

Year Published: 2014Topics: Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: Cattle

Citation: Proctor, H. S., Carder, G. 2014. Can ear postures reliably measure the positive emotional state of cows? Applied Animal Behaviour Science 161, 20-27.

Emotions in dogs being petted by a familiar or unfamiliar person: Validating behavioural indicators of emotional states using heart rate variability

Although physical human–dog interactions have an important influence on the human–dog relationship, few studies have proposed the key factors of physical human–dog contact affecting the well-being of dogs. Therefore, our aim was to investigate the effect of physical human–dog contact...

Year Published: 2014Topics: Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: Dog

Citation: Kuhnea, F., Hlerb, J. C., Struweb, R. 2014. Emotions in dogs being petted by a familiar or unfamiliar person: Validating behavioural indicators of emotional states using heart rate variability. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 161, 113-120.

Validation of a novel behavioral ethogram for identification of postoperative pain in the guinea pig (Cavia porcellus)

Although the guinea pig (Cavia porcellus) has been used in research for over a century and remains one of the most prevalent AWA covered species today, very little has been elucidated in the literature about recognition of clinical pain or...

Year Published: 2014Topics: Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: Guinea Pig, Rodent

Citation: Dunbar, M. L., David, E. M., Aline, M. R. et al. 2014. Validation of a novel behavioral ethogram for identification of postoperative pain in the guinea pig (Cavia porcellus). American Association for Laboratory Animal Science [AALAS] Meeting Official Program, 538 (Abstract #PS48).