Page 299 - The Welfare of Cattle

276 the WeLfare of CattLe

herDSMaNShIP aSSUraNCe

There are multiple aspects of animal care that can be assessed through audit data collection.
However, human interaction and animal fear have proven to be difficult to meaningfully quantify.
A substantial component in this challenge lies in the telos of humans in general. As a species we
tend to display behavior that matches expectations when we are aware that we are being monitored
and evaluated.
In general, the direct interaction between handlers and cows is challenging to assess in quantifi-
able terms through in-person assessments. The potential exists for the implementation of remote
video auditing systems in larger-scale dairies where animal handling and stockmanship activities
occur for several hours each day. Monitoring becomes more difficult at smaller farms where the
contact time between handlers and animals may be much more limited to very concentrated events
at specific times of the day. Since the amount of time available to observe animal handling is so
small in these cases, repeated observations are needed to gain an accurate portrayal of normal han-
dling practices for a single farm.
Challenges exist regarding the identification and selection of means of quantifying the quality of
stockmanship at the farm level through means that are reliable and efficient to perform (de Passillé
and Rushen, 2005). As a result, animal welfare assessment programs will generally focus less or not
at all on the interactions between people and animals and more on applied indicators of an animal’s
relationship with the environment, such as body condition or lameness score.
One approach that has been used in multiple studies to quantify the response of dairy cows to
previous handling experiences is the distance the animals maintain from people. This type of test
often occurs in the form of an avoidance test, which measures the distance animals will maintain as
a handler approaches. An additional type of test in this category is the approach distance test. The
approach distance test is conducted by measuring the duration of time that animals spend within
predetermined threshold distances of people or the distance that an animal will willingly approach
a handler. One challenge with the “distance measures” described above is the difficulty of compar-
ing results across different studies due to the lack of uniformity in testing at this time (de Passillé
and Rushen, 2005). An additional issue that arises with distance tests—either active approach by a
handler or allowing the animal to approach the handler—is a limited consistency of repeatability
between handlers (Windschnurer et al., 2008).
An additional category of tests that have been used to quantify animal responses to human
presence and handling are the handling tests. Handling tests typically focus on the length of time
required to complete a handling task or measures that indicate fear or restlessness of the animal
(Breuer et al., 2000; de Passillé and Rushen, 2005; Lanier et al., 2001). A wide array of handling
tests have been used in published studies of animal response to human interaction with limited
standardization of methods between studies. It is likely that standardized approaches to handling
tests will emerge as common methods are shared between studies.
The third category of tests of responses to human presence and handling are the rating scales.
These tests typically include the assignment of specific definitions to a numerical scale that allows an
observer to describe animal behavior through the assignment of numerical scores (Lanier et al., 2001;
Voisinet et al., 1997). The concept behind these scoring systems is similar to the scoring systems
used for body condition and lameness assessment in multiple species in the approach to making a
subjective visual assessment more objective through the use of clearly defined numerical categories.
Other research regarding stockmanship has applied a set of descriptive terms that observers
of human and animal behavior assign to both the stockperson and the animals they handle after
observing the handling interaction for a specific period of time (Ellingsen et al., 2014). In one
particular study, observers were asked to assign descriptive terms to stock people and the animals
they handled immediately after observing their interaction during a standard husbandry procedure
(weight estimation by heart girth measurement). Seventeen descriptors were available for observers