Quiz 3 Summary

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Summary of Lecture on Environmental Enrichment:

1. What is Environmental Enrichment?

Environmental enrichment involves altering the physical or social environment of animals in captivity to promote better psychological and physical welfare. It addresses animals' behavioral needs by creating conditions that stimulate natural behaviors, beyond just meeting their basic needs.

2. Types of Environmental Enrichment:

• Physical Enrichment: Modifying the animal's enclosure with structures such as toys, ropes, and permanent fixtures (e.g., furniture) to encourage natural behaviors like nesting and exploring.

• Sensory Enrichment: Stimulating the five senses, such as providing visual (mirrors), auditory (vocalizations), olfactory (natural scents), tactile (scratching materials), and taste (palatable items) stimuli.

• Cognitive Enrichment: Offering puzzles or challenges that require problem-solving, such as food hidden in complex setups, to boost the animals’ intellectual abilities.

• Social Enrichment: Encouraging interaction with other animals (either of the same or different species) or using tools like mirrors to create a social experience.

• Food Enrichment: Varying food types, feeding times, and methods (e.g., hunting, hiding food) to mimic natural foraging behaviors.

3. Benefits of Environmental Enrichment:

• Reduces abnormal behaviors and stress.

• Increases the use of space in enclosures.

• Provides animals with more control over their environment.

• Helps animals adapt to new situations, making them better candidates for conservation programs.

• Promotes behaviors similar to those seen in the wild, improving overall welfare.

4. Disadvantages:

• Environmental enrichment can increase the risk of accidents, costs money, and requires time from keepers and biologists.

• Poorly implemented enrichment may cause problems or worsen welfare, and it requires regular maintenance to retain novelty.

5. Safety Considerations:

• Materials used in enrichment should be non-toxic, easily disinfected, and not pose risks of injury or escape.

• It’s essential to offer sufficient enrichment to avoid conflicts between animals.

6. Effectiveness and Limitations:

• Enrichment programs need to be tailored to the species and individual history of the animal, based on natural behaviors and species-specific needs.

• Long-term success requires rethinking treatment, accommodation, and developing measurable goals to track improvement in welfare.

7. Indicators of Welfare Improvement:

• Behavioral Indicators: Increased time in normal activities, social behaviors (grooming, playing), and a reduction in abnormal behaviors.

• Physiological Indicators: Changes in cortisol levels, heart rate, and immunological responses.

• Clinical Indicators: Improvements in body weight, injury rates, and overall health.

8. Environmental Enrichment in Zoos:

Enrichment is crucial in zoos because it ensures animals exhibit natural behaviors, aiding in conservation, education, and research. Animals with abnormal behaviors cannot contribute effectively to these goals and may experience poor welfare.

Summary on Poultry Behaviour and Welfare:

Role of A Poultry Veterinarian:

• Preventative medicine (work towards improving health before major medical interventions are required) 

• Emergency medicine and telemedicine are frequently implemented because once poultry begin having signs of sickness, mortality can spike substantially in 24-48hrs.

• Remain up to date on latest research in housing, feed, drug use and potentially lead your own research trials.

• Insure producers are trained in humane euthanasia and post mortems.

Behavioral needs 

• Vary depending on age, longer life cycles = more risk, and more behavioral needs

  • Perching

  • Foraging (need litter, when removed leads to feather pecking)

  • Nesting (need somewhere quiet/dark)

  • Dust bathing

• Regardless of intentions, too many changes at once are stressful and cause birds to come off feed. Slow, singular changes are the only way to improve welfare and keep birds on fees.

Sickness Behavior

Remember that poultry are a prey species, so they do not want to appear vulnerable even when they are sick.

• May try to make themselves look larger (at this point they’re VERY sick)

• Reluctant to move (Won't extend their neck)

• Isolated from others

• Abnormal behavior/appearance (eyes are squinted, not bright/receptive)

Species Specific

• Broilers (chickens you eat), life cycle ~5 weeks

  • Meat chickens, usually free run/free range, selected to grow as efficiently as possible, fewer behavioral needs as these birds are so focused on eating/sleeping as they rapidly grow.

  • What does a vet visit at a broiler barn look like:

    • Distance exam

      • Where are the birds?

      • What are they doing? Huddling? Panting?

      • What do they sound like?

      • Are they eating/drinking?

    • Walk the barn

      • Do they walk away from you? Healthy chickens should walk away from you.

• Turkeys (poults, hens/toms), life cycle ~11 to 16 weeks

  • Healthy Turkeys walk towards you

  • Genetically selected to grow as efficiently as possible, but they're not as efficient as broilers

  • Need special care/attention during brooding and also need intense training to teach how to eat/drink. Remember: hot/cold, tired birds don't eat.

  • Due to how Turkeys are slaughtered, it is routine beak trim, toe trim, and remove snood, BUT there are no approved pain medication (in progress, I'm working on a literature review with PLV vet Chantel)

• Layers (Lay the eggs you eat), 52-85 weeks

  • Period from chick to laying the goal is to build musculature, vaccinate and train (behavioral focus)

  • Start laying at ~22 weeks

  • Housing

    • Conventional cages

    • Enriched Cages: have perches, scratch pads, dust baths and quiet/dark spaces for nesting. Eggs roll onto a belt and are collected this way.

    • Aviary: Foraging area on the ground where intense lights for stimulation can be found. Levels of perching and nesting areas on either side. Birds must be trained for this system and injuries are common, but the system also makes injured birds harder to find.

    • Free run: all poultry mean is technically "free run" because cages aren't used, this doesn't mean they're outside. Also more risk for dirty eggs and larger groups don't recognize e/o as well (more feather pecking)

    • Free range: Outside in some capacity but doesn't specify housing system or for how long. Presents greater risk of predation and disease transmission.

  • Regardless of housing type, research shows that it is important to keep groups of birds together as their capacity for facial recognition and hierarchy recognition creates less aggression - disrupting this leads to problems.

• Broiler breeders, 52 weeks

  • Both laying hens and broilers (produce eggs and are then eaten)

  • Intensely managed, body uniformity is key to produce healthy eggs but allow for use as meat. These birds would not stop eating if they had continual access to food, and if they become too fat their egg production is compromised - therefore, they are is feed restricted (questionable for welfare)

    • Possible solutions are higher fiber diets, pecking blocks and high salt.

Small Flocks

• While it may seem like this is the ideal life for poultry, but these flocks normally aren't beak trimmed and regularly monitored for aggression like commercial barns.

Summary: Transition from Ranch to Feedyard:

1. Canadian Beef Production:

   • Cow-calf sector makes up 85% of beef production in prairie provinces.

   • Calves are weaned at 5-8 months and feedlot sector starts with yearlings for finishing.

2. Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD):

   • BRD accounts for 70-80% of morbidities and 40-50% of mortalities in feedlot cattle.

   • Pathogens and stress play a key role, with management stressors like weaning, castration, transport contributing to disease susceptibility.

3. Stress and Disease:

   • Stressors include physical (cuts, burns) and psychological (fear, anxiety) factors.

   • Glucocorticoids, released during stress, suppress immunity, increase inflammation, delay wound healing, and reduce leukocyte counts.

4. Management of Stress:

   • Stress management includes early weaning, preconditioning (vaccination, solid feed), and minimizing painful procedures like castration and dehorning.

5. Pain Mitigation:

   • Pain control for castration and dehorning is crucial. Knife castration causes more acute pain, while banding causes chronic pain. Dehorning is painful at any age, especially in calves over 3 months old.

6. Weaning:

   • Abrupt weaning causes significant stress. Techniques like fenceline and two-stage weaning (nose-flaps) help reduce stress and improve growth rates.

7. Transport:

   • Long transport durations, poor handling, and environmental conditions during transport cause stress and body weight loss, leading to productivity and welfare concerns.

   • New Canadian regulations limit cattle transport to 36 hours with rest stops to reduce stress.

8. Rest Stops:

   • Rest stops aim to alleviate stress during long transports but may increase BRD due to exposure to new environments and pathogens.

9. Branding:

   • Both hot-iron and freeze branding are painful, with few producers using pain control. Branding impacts industry image and productivity but has minimal direct impact on performance.

10. Alternatives to Branding and Castration:

    • Alternatives like RFID tags, anti-GnRH vaccines for castration, and polled genetics for dehorning are suggested but not widely adopted due to cost or availability.

Summary of Lecture on Animal Welfare Audits

What Are Animal Welfare Audits?

Animal welfare audits evaluate whether farms comply with welfare standards, ensuring humane treatment. While these audits can provide assurance, they do not guarantee perfect welfare outcomes. Different programs have their own unique standards.

Why Are Audits Important?

Audits provide accountability for farms, satisfying public concerns over animal welfare. By auditing farms, society can maintain trust that animal welfare standards are being upheld, which is critical for maintaining a farm's "social license" to operate.

Types of Audits

1. First-Party Audits: Conducted internally by a person employed by the farm.

2. Second-Party Audits: Conducted by a party affiliated with the farm, such as a buyer or partner.

3. Third-Party Audits: Conducted by an independent entity free from conflicts of interest, such as PAACO or SPCA Certified.

Formats of Animal Welfare Assurance Programs

1. Non-Mandatory Guidelines: Often established by industry groups or government bodies. These are early responses to welfare concerns and are typically science-based recommendations.

2. Regulations: Legal requirements at the federal or provincial level, like the Health of Animals Act or Criminal Code in Canada.

3. Product Differentiation Programs: Labels products with a higher welfare standard, often sold at a premium to consumers.

4. Corporate Specifications: Standards set by companies (e.g., grocery stores) to assure customers that the food they sell meets welfare guidelines.

Measures Used in Audits

1. Resource-Based Measures: Focus on environmental factors like food, water, shelter, and space (e.g., stocking density or access to shade).

2. Management-Based Measures: Protocols that specify how to handle situations like euthanasia or transport. These focus on farm management practices.

3. Animal-Based Measures: Assess the welfare state of the animal directly through outcomes like lameness, body condition, or behavior.

Key animal-based measures for dairy cows include:

• Lameness

• Poor body condition

• Cleanliness (udder, legs, flanks)

• Injuries (e.g., hock, neck, knee)

Examples of Animal-Based Welfare Evaluations

• Gait Scoring: Used to assess lameness severity.

• Body Condition Scoring: Evaluates fat coverage on animals to assess health.

• Cow Comfort Index: Measures the percentage of cows lying down in stalls to determine comfort.

• Abnormal Behavior: Observations like tongue rolling or excessive vocalization indicate welfare issues.