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Using Behaviour to Understand and Assess Welfare in Cattle

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Cattle Welfare in Dairy and Beef Systems

Part of the book series: Animal Welfare ((AWNS,volume 23))

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Abstract

Animals show behavioural responses to their environments based on the integration of their underlying emotional, cognitive and motivational processes, with the ultimate goal of fulfilling needs that promote survival. Attempts to improve welfare involve understanding these needs and the factors affecting them. Assessing behaviour is one of the major methods that can be used to improve welfare. This chapter discusses the different methods to use animal behaviour to investigate welfare in cattle. The two main methods are direct observations of spontaneous behaviour and behavioural tests. Observations of spontaneous behaviour capture the undisturbed behaviour of cattle in their ‘home’ surroundings. This can be used to document the natural or ‘baseline’ patterns of behaviour. Behavioural tests typically require placing an animal in an experimental pen with stimuli or resources that we want to understand the animal’s response to. Behavioural tests allow us to investigate animal preference, motivation and emotional responses in more depth. Welfare assessment protocols often include behavioural indicators of positive and negative welfare but are typically observations of ongoing behaviour rather than behavioural tests. Finally, this chapter will examine what behavioural assessments cannot tell us and where further developments in this science are necessary.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Kenny Rutherford and Simon Turner for their valuable comments on drafts of this chapter. Major thanks is due to past and present students for their academic interest and enthusiasm for animal welfare science that has vastly contributed to our own knowledge and experience of the range and complexities of behavioural testing methods and indeed, positively contributed to the scientific community. We are also grateful to our families for their support during the writing phase.

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  1. SRUC, Edinburgh, UK

    Marie J. Haskell & Fritha M. Langford

  2. University of Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

    Fritha M. Langford

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  1. Marie J. Haskell
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  2. Fritha M. Langford
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Correspondence to Marie J. Haskell .

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  1. SRUC (Scotland’s Rural College), Edinburgh, UK

    Marie Haskell

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Haskell, M.J., Langford, F.M. (2023). Using Behaviour to Understand and Assess Welfare in Cattle. In: Haskell, M. (eds) Cattle Welfare in Dairy and Beef Systems. Animal Welfare, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21020-4_2

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