Welfare assessment of horses: the AWIN approach

Abstract

The EU-funded Animal Welfare Indicators (AWIN) research project (2011-2015) aimed to improve animal welfare through the development of practical on-farm animal welfare assessment protocols. The present study describes the application of the AWIN approach to the development of a welfare assessment protocol for horses (Equus caballus). Its development required the following steps: (i) selection of potential welfare indicators; (ii) bridging gaps in knowledge; (iii) consulting stakeholders; and (iv) testing a prototype protocol on-farm. Compared to existing welfare assessment protocols for other species, the AWIN welfare assessment protocol for horses introduces a number of innovative aspects, such as implementation of a two-level strategy focused on improving on-farm feasibility and the use of electronic tools to achieve standardised data collection and so promote rapid outcomes. Further refinement to the AWIN welfare assessment protocol for horses is needed in order to firstly gather data from a larger reference population and, secondly, enhance the welfare assessment protocol with reference to different horse housing and husbandry conditions.

A Ten-Stage Protocol for Assessing the Welfare of Individual Non-Captive Wild Animals: Free-Roaming Horses (Equus Ferus Caballus) as an Example

“…Literature searches should be performed to develop a list of potential indices that may have already been described for use in welfare assessments of the species of interest, either in a free-roaming context or in a domesticated/captive context, and to evaluate their suitability. For example, various horse welfare assessments have been described and some of the indices used may be practical to apply to wild free-roaming horses [16,19,20,22,23,92,93]. Published information may also exist with regard to methods for measuring or observing some of these indices.…”

“…Methods for assessing welfare have been well developed for a range of captive animals [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23], including for wild species [24][25][26][27][28]. Although a need to develop methodologies for assessing the welfare of free-roaming wildlife has been highlighted [1], to date, such assessments have been largely restricted to impacts of non-lethal or lethal control of unwanted species, such as rodents, possums, rabbits, kangaroos, camels, badgers, and horses [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47].…”

Parameters for the Analysis of Social Bonds in Horses

“…Welfare assessment protocols are created to measure the wellbeing of individual horses that are kept in group housing and include behaviour assessments [1,2,3,4]. However, social bonds are often not considered because of observation time restrictions for the protocols.…”

“…Keeping horses in social groups has become increasingly popular and several welfare assessment protocols have been created to monitor the well-being and the behaviour of the group members [1,2,3,4]. When group compositions are managed to ensure the welfare of the group members, it is important to consider social bonds [5].…”

A Pilot Study on Evaluation The Far Position of Some Daily Activity of Cows

“…5,[16][17][18] Hayvanlarda duygusal durum varsayımları genellikle davranışsal ve fizyolojik ölçümlerden elde edilmektedir. 15 25,26 Teknolojik gelişmeler olsa bile şu anda bütün bir hayvanın vücut duruşunu esas alan "niteliksel davranış değerlendirmesi", oldukça sık kullanılan bir yöntem olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Bu değerlendirme, insanın hayvanların nasıl hissettiği hakkındaki yorumuna dayanmakta ve bir ölçekte derecelendirilen aktif, mutlu, korkutucu gibi 20 kadar tanımlayıcıdan oluşmaktadır.…”