Restricted milk feeding is a critical welfare concern in dairy production. Automated milk feeders (AMF) may help farms provide appropriate milk rations without adding to the workload. Our study aimed to understand how the use of AMF affects milk-feeding conditions and work practices important for calf welfare, as well as the work and social lives of dairy farmers and farm staff. We conducted one focus group interview and 11 semi-structured interviews with owners or staff on 14 Swedish AMF dairy farms. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. We identified six themes that describe participants’ experiences of using AMF: Calf welfare, Onboarding the calf, Disease transmission and detection, Managing the AMF, Task and time allocation, and Experience of work and work engagement. Although participants generally reported a sense of vulnerability in the event of failure and dissatisfaction with the distributor’s service, they were overall highly satisfied with the system. Our findings indicate that AMF use can overcome an important barrier to achieving higher milk allowances by enabling more frequent milk meals with reduced labour and ensuring that calves do not experience prolonged hunger. Based on our findings, we suggest that if the main challenges for calves (disease transmission and competition) and people (technology management and disease detection) are sufficiently addressed, AMF can improve calf welfare and social sustainability in dairy calf care.
Aggression is one of the most serious hazards to the welfare of captive animals, with the potential to cause pain, injury, and mortality. Physical enrichment (PE), defined as the provision of physical structures and objects such as shelters, is widely used to improve welfare, yet it can also facilitate aggression by creating defendable resources. This perspective integrates insights from behavioural ecology and animal welfare science to develop a conceptual framework for understanding how PE shapes aggression and well-being in captive animals. We propose that combining resource defence theory with detailed behavioural analysis provides a powerful tool to interpret how PE influences the expression of aggression and how it is distributed among performers and recipients within the group. We identify mechanisms through which specific attributes of enrichment (complexity, distribution, size, materials used, placement) may mitigate adverse welfare outcomes, including reducing contest intensity, providing opportunities for conflict avoidance, and diverting behavioural motivation away from direct competition. We conclude by proposing targeted experimental approaches to isolate the effect of specific enrichment attributes on behaviour and welfare. Applying this framework can inform the design of enrichment strategies that enable animals to express natural behaviours, including aggression, while minimising negative welfare outcomes.
A Delphi survey was used as part of a process to identify priority animal-based welfare measures as a starting point for developing a future dairy cattle welfare assessment framework for Indonesian dairy farms. Two rounds of an e-survey were used to reach a consensus of expert opinion from four organisations associated with dairy cattle welfare in Indonesia. Sixty-three respondents were identified as ‘experts’ and sent Delphi survey 1, which asked them to list, for Indonesian dairy farms, three key welfare problems and six animal-based welfare measures that could be used to identify those problems. The 47 experts who responded to survey 1 identified 54 different welfare problems and 83 different animal-based measures. In the follow-up Delphi survey 2, 44 experts rated the importance (5-point scale) of each of the 83 measures and ranked their five most important measures. Based on the importance score, a final consensus set of 20 animal-based measures was produced after checking for duplication. This set of measures was weighted towards negative health effects, likely due to the dominance of veterinarians in the panel, highlighting a prioritisation bias in Indonesian veterinarians’ thinking towards negative health effects rather than behavioural and positive welfare. Lameness, mastitis, and heat stress were the key health and welfare issues highlighted by the panellists. These surveys have identified potential measures supporting the development of a framework to address priority welfare problems on Indonesian smallholder dairy farms. However, a wider perspective on welfare priorities in Indonesian cattle is needed before the protocol is finalised.
There is limited information on the slaughter systems employed by small-scale poultry producer/processors in the UK. This study aimed to evaluate these systems through: (1) a survey of slaughter practices used by small-scale UK producer/processors; and (2) an experimental assessment of stunning effectiveness in turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo domesticus) using the three most commonly reported head-only electrode configurations. A survey of 20 poultry and waterfowl producer/processors revealed substantial variation in stunning equipment, electrode design and reported electrical parameters. Constant-voltage systems predominated, and many respondents were unable to report the current, voltage or frequency used. Four producer/processors reported operating below the legal minimum current for turkeys (400 mA), and a range of electrode types was identified, with the three most reported tested in the experimental study. In the experimental study, 39 ex-breeding turkeys were stunned with a commercially available constant voltage (50 Hz AC sinusoidal waveform) head-only electrical stunner using single-pin, needle-pin or three-pin electrodes. Stunning effectiveness was assessed using recorded electrical parameters, current profiles, behavioural and brainstem indicators, and time to return of visual evoked potentials (VEPs). Needle-pin and three-pin electrodes produced higher peak currents and shorter times to peak current than single-pin electrodes. VEPs were initially abolished immediately after all stuns but returned earliest with single pin (12.0 [± 2.7] s, range: 5.4–24.0 s), and needle pin electrodes (15.0 [± 2.6] s, range: 4.8–35.4 s). Return of VEPs was delayed significantly longest with three-pin electrodes (26.0 [± 2.6] s, range: 13.8–52.8 s) compared to the other electrode types. There was no significant difference between treatments in time to return of rhythmic breathing or nictitating membrane reflexes. In conclusion, these findings suggest that constant-voltage head-only stunning systems may not reliably prevent recovery before or during exsanguination, although three-pin electrodes performed better than the alternatives.
Contemporary animal welfare science emphasises the roles of challenge, skill development and skill expression in positive animal welfare, and takes a dynamic, temporal view of affect. However, cognitive enrichment as a welfare intervention (CE originally defined by Clark 2011 and later termed CEwelfare by Clark 2022) has largely focused on how challenge impacts welfare at a general activity budget level, rather than evidence of skill development and coping during challenge. This paper aims to realign CE with the current views of challenge and animal welfare, by proposing an updated CE definition and a new methodological approach. CE arises when an animal is challenged to develop and express its evolved cognitive skills, and the process or outcome of coping with challenge is associated with a net positive affective state. We argue that rule-scaffolded play (gameplay) could be a powerful subtype of CE, because games offer skill development opportunities similar to the Zone of Proximal Development in humans. Gameplay unfolds as a sequence of events, allowing us to explore how cognitive performance is temporally linked to emotional expression. We describe two broad types of CE game – Innovation and Flow – that feature relatively lower and higher rule scaffolding, respectively. We also discuss the role of frustration in CE; initial frustration is normal when animals encounter a challenge, but a Flow game aims to avoid ongoing boredom and frustration by maintaining a skill-challenge balance. We end by presenting a case study of a Flow game for marine mammals in a zoological setting.
