Use of Qualitative Behaviour Assessment as an indicator of welfare in donkeys

Abstract

One of the objectives of the Animal Welfare Indicators project was to develop animal-based indicators to assess donkey welfare, including their emotional state. This study aimed to develop a fixed rating scale of Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA) for donkeys, to evaluate the inter-observer reliability when applied on-farm, and to assess whether the QBA outcomes correlate to other welfare measures.A fixed list of 16 descriptors was designed on the basis of a consultation in a focus group. The fixed list was then used by four trained observers to score nine 2 min videos of groups of donkeys owned by six farms and on-farm to score 11 donkey facilities representative of the most common type of donkey facilities in Western Europe. On each farm one experienced assessor collected different welfare measures on all the adult donkeys. The QBA scores and welfare measures were analysed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA, correlation matrix, no rotation). Kendall's W and ANOVA were used to assess inter-observer reliability. PCA revealed three main components explaining 79% of total variation between them. PC1 ranged from at ease/relaxed to aggressive/uncomfortable, suggesting that this Component is important in the description of the valence of donkeys' affective states. PC2 was more related to the level of arousal of donkeys, ranging from apathetic to distressed/responsive. The four assessors showed a good level of agreement on the first two dimensions of the PCA (Kendall's W varying from 0.61 to 0.90), and there was no significant effect of observer on donkey QBA scores (ANOVA p > 0.05), both for the videos and on-farm. PCA of all measures together showed positive QBA descriptors on PC1 (relaxed, at ease, happy, friendly) to be associated with positive human-donkey interaction indicators (absence of tail tuck, no avoidance, and positive reaction to an assessor walking down the side of the donkey).Our findings suggest that QBA is a suitable tool to identify the emotional state of donkeys on-farm. A fixed list of descriptors can be used consistently by different trained assessors as a valid addition to a number of animal welfare assessment indicators.

Development of a fixed list of descriptors for the qualitative behavioural assessment of shelter dogs

“…Inter-observer reliability with regard to QBA has two aspects: agreement in qualitative ranking of animals on expressive dimensions, and agreement in mean value of animal scores on expressive dimensions [43]. Agreement on qualitative ranking in the present study was good for all four PCs, (W=0.60-0.80), which aligns with previous studies testing the reliability of QBA fixed lists in a range of species [25,44,45], though some recent studies indicate that in field conditions as opposed to video-based conditions, achieving good agreement on qualitative ranking of animals on QBA dimensions can be more difficult [45,46]. There was however a significant observer effect on the mean value of animal scores for all four PCs suggesting differences between observers in how they used VAS scales for scoring across most terms.…”

“…Most QBA studies report differences in the level of agreement with which various individual terms were applied by observers (e.g. [25]) In the present study 12 out of 20 individual descriptors were applied at a level of agreement lower than 0.60, while 3 terms (depressed, explorative, aggressive) fell below 0.50. This lack of agreement may to some extent be due to the relatively low prevalence of these expressions in the video clips, however depressed demeanour may generally be difficult to distinguish reliably from other low energy expressions such as relaxed and/or bored [29,47].…”

“…Overall this list was balanced in term of their semantic meaning ( positive versus negative emotional state) and level of arousal they expressed ( high versus low arousal). A brief characterisation of each term was produced on the basis of previous QBA studies [25–27]. These characterisations were then translated onto Italian to facilitate scoring by the observers.…”

Assessing quality of life and welfare of donkeys in the UK

“…There are welfare assessment tools available for individual and group assessment of donkey welfare such as animal welfare indicators (AWIN) welfare assessment protocol for donkeys and, for working donkeys, the standardised equine-based welfare assessment tool (SEBWAT) (see further reading). There are also almost continual advances in animal behaviour science, such as qualitative behaviour assessment (QBA), looking at the emotional state of the donkey (Minero and others 2016). …”

Using an observer rating method to assess the effects of rotational stocking method on beef cattle temperament over time

“…Furthermore, a similar qualitative approach -Qualitative Behavior Assessment (QBA; Wemelsfelder et al, 2000) -was developed to assess welfare in farm animals and has been shown to be a valid and reliable method in swine (Wemelsfelder et al, 2000), dairy cattle (Rousing and Wemelsfelder, 2006), beef cattle , dairy buffalo (Napolitano et al, 2012), sheep (Phythian et al, 2013), and donkeys (Minero et al, 2015). Despite the vast literature employing rating methods to assess temperament of captive wild animals, these methods have rarely been used to assess the temperament of farm species.…”