Kinematic parameters of sheep walking on a treadmill

Abstract

Ovine locomotion studies are rare, despite their relevance for medical research. The aim of this preliminary study was to investigate habituation and temporospatial parameters during treadmill walking of seven Austrian Mountain sheep. Sheep were naïve to treadmill exercise. During five treadmill sessions, movement cycle duration (MCD), vertical trunk movement (VTM), stride height (SH), stride length (SL), and percentage of movement cycle at stance (%St) were assessed. Two sheep were excluded from the study because they would not walk on the treadmill. From the end measurement session, MCD (0.95 s) and %St (62%) were similar to reported kinetics of sheep walking over ground, although stride length (1.05 m) was longer in this study. These findings suggest that sheep may require more than five sessions to become habituated to treadmill walking. KeywordsSheep; Locomotion; Kinematics; Habituation; Treadmill Live sheep are commonly used as an animal model for orthopaedic research. Due to the similarities between ovine and human skeletons, sheep are often used in studies of the human spine (Reitmaier et al., 2013) and knee joints (Tapper et al., 2006(Tapper et al., , 2008. Extrapolation from sheep models to humans can only be meaningful if biomechanical interspecies variations are well documented. As a part of a larger comparative biomechanical human and sheep study, this study examined some key aspects of ovine locomotion. While the kinetics of sheep locomotion over ground have been reported (Kim and Breur, 2008;Agostinho et al., 2012), adequate descriptions of temporospatial locomotion parameters in healthy sheep using a kinematic set-up and treadmill are lacking, as are the number of training sessions required for treadmill habituation. Therefore, the aim of this study was to report kinematic parameters in mature sheep during treadmill walking, and to identify habituation to treadmill walk over five treadmill sessions. Conflict of interest statementNone of the authors of this paper has a financial or personal relationship with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence or bias the content of the paper. Seven mature Austrian Mountain sheep (2.1 ± 0.88 years; 72.2 ± 7.29 kg) were included. All sheep were accustomed to walking and trotting in-hand over the non-moving treadmill (Mustang 2200, Kagra). Ethical approval was granted from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research (13/10/97/2011). Europe PMC Funders GroupAll of the sheep were deemed to be sound by an experienced orthopaedic veterinarian. Reflective markers were attached to the head, withers, sacrum, and below each fetlock joint. Ten high speed cameras (Eagle Digital Real Time System; 1200 Hz) were used for kinematic data collection using kinematic software (Cortex 3.6, Motion Analysis). Data were collected during four treadmill training sessions (A-D) and an end session (E), against which all measurements were compared. Training days were interspersed by over ground exercise only or rest (Table 1). Sessions A-D con...

Surface electromyography in animal biomechanics: A systematic review

“…The only study in this review which investigated sheep, analysed walk and trot locomotion on a treadmill. Based on this and previous (non-EMG) studies (Tapper et al 2008, 2006; Valentin et al 2014), it is evident that sheep can be trained to walk and trot on a treadmill, which might suggest that sheep may also be trained to perform other tasks which could be investigated using sEMG. Therefore there certainly appears to be scope to develop sEMG in ruminants.…”

Sheep Gait Biomechanics and the Assessment of Musculoskeletal Conditions: A Systematic Review

“…Analysing all these outcome measure collected from the 28 studies included, the most recurrent were the calculation of the mean peak (vertical) GRF [13,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][26][27][28]31,32,[34][35][36]38,41], gait cycle duration [18,27,30,35,37,41,43], stance -swing phase duration [27,30,32,34,35,[41][42][43], percentage of stance/swing phase in gait [22,35,40,42], stride length [27,[33][34][35][36]40,43] and the stifle joint angles during gait [22,23,25,[29]<...>…”

“…Wilson et al[43], Tapper et al[18], Kim et al[27], Hobbs-Chell et al[33], Agostinho et al[35] and Valentin et al[40] evaluated the stride length as the distance from hoof strike to hoof strike, from the same limb. Safayi et al[42], Wilson et al[43] Tapper et al[18], Tapper et al[22], Kim et al[27] and Agostinho et al[35] use the same criteria described to calculate the duration of the gait cycle.…”

Comparative need for spinal stabilisation between quadrupedal and bipedal locomotion

“…A safety rope was attached to the left wrist of the humans which did not interfere with upper body movement and only served to ensure the treadmill would stop if the rope was pulled. The sheep had previously been trained to walk and trot on the treadmill (Valentin et al, 2014). A sheep was considered accustomed to the treadmill when they were able to walk and trot calmly behind a handler for several minutes.…”