Parrots (Psittaciformes) are widely kept in captivity, yet their welfare is under-researched in comparison to other captive species. This study aimed to determine key welfare issues affecting parrots through a modified Delphi approach. Twenty-eight welfare issues were first compiled via a preliminary literature review. Parrot welfare experts and sector professionals (n = 26) were then recruited to participate in an online survey to rank the identified welfare issues on a six-point scale according to severity, duration and prevalence of each issue. Participants could provide commentary on their ranking and propose additional welfare issues of concern. Items with a mean score of 4 or above progressed to a second survey, where participants (n = 14) indicated whether they agreed or disagreed with the current ranking of the welfare issue. Finally, two online workshops were held, where participants (n = 7) discussed the rankings from the second survey and sought to establish a consensus on the top ten welfare issues in each category and overall. Six of the seven final participants agreed with the final rankings, achieving a consensus rate of 86%. The top welfare issues overall were lack of owner knowledge and support; social isolation; housing; environmental opportunity to express behaviours; nutrition; development of normal behaviour; lack of a ‘life plan’ for birds; abnormal behaviours; lack of parrot-specific veterinary training; and insufficient application and enforcement of legislation. It is hoped that identification and recognition of these priority areas will be useful in directing future efforts in research, owner and veterinary education, and policy initiatives to improve parrot welfare.

Many veterinary practices around the world do not meet basic post-operative cat care, thereby compromising cat welfare. Understanding why the appropriate care is not always given is important. The current study used a mixed methods approach of two phases, to investigate the barriers Malaysian veterinarians face in seeking to provide good cat care in practice. Phase 1 involved a survey consisting of 14 questions which were divided into three sections (demographic details, basic management and barriers experienced by practices) and emailed to 143 Malaysian veterinarians. While for phase 2, 20 interviews were undertaken (recruited from the survey sample) to further elaborate on the results. A Thematic Analysis was conducted to extract the main barriers experienced by participants. A total of 49 veterinarians completed the survey. Over half of the respondents were senior veterinarians (i.e. those with two or more years in practice) (53.1%; n = 26) who were aware of the basic environmental provisions that cats need post-surgery such as bedding and toileting facilities (57.1%; n = 28). Cost (47%; n = 23) was the biggest restriction to good care provision. Interview findings showed that participants were aware of comfortable post-surgery environments helping recovery, but barriers were highlighted: workload factors and a lack of understanding of cat pain behaviours and associated stress. This suggested that participants had the knowledge required to provide good cat care but experienced difficulties putting this into practice. Therefore, to improve cat welfare in veterinary practice, instead of focusing purely on education, interventions to increase good cat care could include targeted elements that support behaviour change to overcome the barriers.

As a free-ranging, social species, the housing of horses (Equus caballus) may limit their opportunity to display natural behaviour, compromising well-being. This review records and presents studies that have investigated horse housing design, evaluates the location and number of studies carried out to date, and reports the methods used to assess impact on equine well-being. A Boolean search was conducted in two databases: Web of Science and Scopus, filtered according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol, resulting in 60 peer-reviewed papers for evaluation. Key findings are that a significant amount of work to date has been carried out in Europe and the USA, and the frequency of horse housing studies has steadily increased over the last 33 years, with 52% of them occurring in the last eight years. Health and welfare measures indicate benefits of housing horses in more natural management systems, particularly with conspecifics. Generally, the studies reviewed were only conducted in the short term, therefore future research should aim to increase the length of time over which housing is evaluated, particularly to ensure studies continue beyond an adaptation period. The review also highlights a requirement for more standardised methodology in housing welfare evaluation to allow for more meaningful comparisons to be made. Studies seeking to improve horse welfare in existing housing systems, in the face of limited space or other management constraints, are of high value to the end user and are encouraged. The studies reviewed here represent a significant and diverse body of work from which gaps in knowledge and future research directions can be determined.

The purpose of this study was to assess the diversity of physiological stress responses elicited by tethering versus loose holding in the Swedish domestic goat (Capra hircus). Eight goats were randomly divided into two groups and the experiment was performed in a crossover design. Six goats had implanted transmitters that registered heart rate and arterial blood pressure telemetrically and blood samples were taken on separate days. Heart rate increased around feeding both when the goats were held loose in pairs, and when they were tied up. When the goats were tethered, the heart rates and blood pressures were higher, and the concentrations of ß-endorphin and oxytocin lower, compared to when held loose in pairs. In conclusion, housing and the company of another animal affect arterial blood pressure, heart rate, and the concentrations of ß-endorphin and oxytocin in goats, but the cortisol and vasopressin concentrations did not differ between the treatments. The higher arterial blood pressure and heart rate, and lower concentrations of ß-endorphin and oxytocin in tethered goats indicate that being tied up may be more stressful for the goats compared to being held loose. The use of single measures, eg cortisol concentrations, was not sufficient to give an accurate picture of the animals’ response to the management system. This study demonstrates the importance of using a wide variety of physiological measures when evaluating stress in animal welfare research.

Over the past decade there has been huge growth in the implementation of animal welfare assessments and audits in a variety of animal applications around the world. These include quality assurance programmes for meat, milk and eggs, certification for specialty brands or food-labelling programmes, accreditation of zoos, laboratories and animal shelters, and proofs of compliance with animal welfare standards required by regulatory agencies. Assessing animal welfare in such practical settings poses challenges at many levels. The animal welfare measures chosen for an assessment must be valid, repeatable and robust, and the sampling techniques must provide accurate representations of the overall welfare status of large groups of animals. Animal welfare assessors can come from a range of backgrounds with varying skill levels and experience and need to receive adequate training to ensure reliability. Although automated measures for animal welfare assessments can reduce potential for assessor error and bias, save time and reduce costs they must be sufficiently validated.

Electrocution of an animal is inhumane if it is not rendered instantaneously insensible by the application of sufficient current density within vital centres of the brain. Application of electric current which does not achieve this, is likely to cause severe pain. The humane aspects of electrical lancing have aroused widespread concern and debate.

For an electrically lanced whale of the size of those currently hunted, previous research has indicated that the current densities produced in the heart and brain are unlikely to reliably render the animal insensible or stop its heart. This study supports these findings and demonstrates that the presence of salt water/immersion may further reduce current densities. Evidence for the failure of the electric lance includes the necessity for multiple and prolonged applications of electric current.

Reasons for the failure of the electric lance include non-optimal current injection sites, insufficient current injected, the presence of salt water, and the trauma caused by the explosive harpoon. The efficacy of the electric lance may be falsely exaggerated for reasons associated with blood loss and misdiagnosis of death. All evidence clearly indicates that attempts to stop the heart by electrocution will cause severe pain to an already traumatized animal.

We suggest that the use of the electric lance is clearly inhumane, and are pleased to announce that its use in Japanese whaling operations was reportedly discontinued as from 1997.

The aim of this study was to investigate several production parameters and the level of welfare of organic dairy cows kept in two different geographical and social contexts. The study group included 1,751 cows from 19 organic dairy farms, 11 of which were situated in hilly areas and 8 in plains areas. After an examination had been made of the general characteristics of each farm, the following data were collected: milk production; milk protein and lipid content; somatic cell count (SCC) and microbial count; lameness score (LS); body condition score (BCS) and udder cleanliness score (UHS). Welfare level was assessed using Bartussek's ANI-35-L system and the van Roessel ‘prototype for clinical welfare scoring’. Our data indicate that remarkable organisational and management differences exist between the two types of farms: farms in plains areas have a larger number of cattle and are corporate in structure rather than family run. The levels of welfare, health and production were shown to be high in both types of farms, though in some cases higher welfare scores were observed in farms situated in plains areas. The two types of ‘welfare scores’ we used were positively correlated. Our data indicate that organic farming of dairy cows successfully combines, in the large majority of cases, good levels of productivity, animal health and animal welfare; this latter aspect may be a valuable marketing point for organic milk, considering the propensity displayed by a significant portion of European consumers to buy food produced using systems that assure a high degree of animal welfare.

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects of an unfamiliar nest and environmental enrichment, ie provision of an additional nest, on farmed blue fox (Alopex lagopus) vixens’ reproductive performance. Two experimental groups were evaluated in the study: i) a single nest (SN) group where vixens had an unfamiliar top nest only, and ii) a group with two nests (TN), an unfamiliar top nest and a familiar floor nest. Since reproductive performance is typically lower in young blue fox vixens, half of the experimental animals consisted of primiparous vixens, to examine whether an unfamiliar and an additional nest affected primiparous and multiparous vixens’ reproduction differently. No significant differences were found in reproductive performance between the experimental groups or between the primiparous and the multiparous vixens with the number of weaned cubs per inseminated vixen 4.8 (± 4.0) and 4.9 (± 4.5) for the primiparous and 5.6 (± 4.9) and 5.5 (± 4.6) for the multiparous vixens in SN and TN groups, respectively. In the multiparous vixens, the cub losses were higher in SN than in TN groups. The higher cub loss in the SN group may have been due to the lack of a familiar nest. In the TN group, where vixens had the opportunity to choose between two nest types, the majority (86%) of the primiparous vixens whelped in the floor nest, whereas the majority (73%) of the multiparous vixens favoured the unfamiliar top nest for whelping. Both nests were used by 43% of all TN vixens, a finding that indicates that an additional nest may have an enrichment value for blue fox vixens. The potential welfare consequences of providing blue fox vixens with an additional nest box should be investigated in future studies.

Ninety-six pregnant sows, previously penned in individual stalls, were housed in groups of four in pens containing three zones: a) four individual feeding stalls without rear gates, b) a communal sleeping kennel and c) a dunging area between the stalls and kennel. The feeding stalls were either long (2m) or short (1m) with barriers made of wire mesh. The daily allowance of 2.5kg pelleted feed per sow was presented either all at once (dump) or at the rate of approximately 100g/min by a manual system (trickle). Dung disposal systems were either a pit füled with sawdust-based compost, a slatted floor, or straw on a sloped concrete floor. There were two replicates of the 2×2×3 factorial design. The location of sows was observed from time-lapse video recordings taken at regular intervals throughout the 31 day experimental period.

Use of the three zones of the pens was influenced by feeding method, barrier length and dung disposal system. Overall the feeding stalls were used more with trickle than with dump feeding (P<0.05); more with long than with short barriers (P<0.001), and most with slatted floors and least with the straw system (P<0.001). AU these treatments had the opposite effects on the use of the communal kennel The use of the dunging area was not affected by feeding method or stall length but was greater (P<0.01) on the compost compared with the other two dung disposal systems. Throughout the experimental period the use of feeding stalls decreased (P<0.001). Orcadian use of the pen zones interacted with barrier length and dung disposal system. Kennels were used most at night in pens with straw, exceeding 54minlh with half length (1m) stalls. The lowest night-time use of kennels, around 8min/h, was found in pens with full length (2m) stalls combined with either compost or slats. Ambient temperature did not have a major influence on use of pen zones.

The occupation of stalls, especially full length stalls, indicates that offering a choice between solitary and communal areas may improve the welfare of group-housed sows.

Despite increased concerns about dairy cattle welfare, there is a paucity of knowledge regarding their welfare and the attitudes of farmers and veterinarians in the Western Balkan region. This is the first on-farm study to address dairy cattle welfare and the attitudes of farmers and veterinarians towards animal welfare in Kosovo. Thirty tie-stall dairy farms across seven Kosovo regions were assessed twice with an interval of 10 to 12 months. During the first visit, the Welfare Quality® assessment protocol was applied, whilst the second visit focused on clinical animal-based indicators and interviews with the farmers regarding intervention thresholds for a number of welfare indicators. Additionally, such thresholds were obtained from 15 veterinarians via an online questionnaire. The main areas of concern that were highlighted relate to comfort around resting (soiling of animals, restriction of lying down movements) and injuries, including lameness. Farmers and veterinarians agreed on the intervention thresholds for the majority of the indicators (eg animals with dirty udders, animals with lesions/swellings) but differences were found for important health and welfare issues (eg farmers suggesting a higher threshold for lameness compared to veterinarians). Compared to the on-farm prevalences, both farmers and veterinarians suggested lower intervention levels for welfare issues indicating an awareness of problems. In conclusion, investments into close co-operation between farmers, veterinarians and other advisors regarding awareness-building and inducing changes in daily management routines are considered necessary to improve dairy cow welfare.

With this issue the UFAW journal Animal Welfare enters its second year. It is appropriate here to thank two of the Section Editors, Professor Anton Beynen and Dr James Serpell for the work they did on Volume 1 of the journal; they have now stood down as active members of the editorial team but have joined the group of Editorial Advisers. We welcome the two new Section Editors, Professor Jann Hau and Dr Dennis Turner.

An increasing public concern over the welfare of livestock species is motivating more producers to consider changes to production practices. Providing environmental enrichment for intensively housed animals is one such potentially welfare-enhancing change. The goal of environmental enrichment is to provide biologically relevant environmental stimuli that allows an animal to perform highly motivated, species-specific behaviours. To date, there is no research specific to the applicability of environmental enrichment for commercial boars (Sus scrofa domesticus), nor on commercial boar welfare in general. In this study, eight individually housed, mature boars were observed to prefer interacting with hanging cotton rope enrichment over hanging rubber chew sticks when given the option. There was a significantly negative correlation between the amount of time boars spent interacting with rope and the amount of time they spent performing stereotypic pen manipulation, suggesting that the rope was more effective at reducing stereotypic behaviour than the rubber. Such reductions in amount of time spent performing abnormal stereotypic behaviours could indicate that some of the animals’ behavioural needs are being met by the enrichment object. Thus, the results of this study could help provide producers with more objective, research-based suggestions concerning the efficacy of practical enrichment choices for individually housed boars.