Ag Animal Enrichment ACM 110 What is Enrichment What is the Purpose of Enrichment Outline Types of Enrichment Species-specific Enrichment Strategies • Environmental enrichment involves the enhancement of an animals physical or social environment What is Enrichment? • Significant component of refinement efforts for animals used in research and teaching • Has been shown to have wide-ranging physiological and behavioral effects on a variety of species of animals including reducing the incidences of severity of undesirable or abnormal behaviors • Abnormal behaviors observed in farms animals include: • Locomotor stereotypes such as weaving, pacing, and route-tracing Result of No Enrichment • Mouth-based behaviors such as: • Tail-biting and fighting in rodents • Wool eating by sheep • Feather pecking and cannibalism by poultry • Bar biting by pigs • Tongue rolling by cattle • Wind-sucking by horses • Goals of enrichment programs • Increasing the number and range of normal behaviors shown by the animal What is the Purpose? • Preventing the development of abnormal behaviors or reducing their frequency or severity • Increasing positive utilization of the environment • Increasing the animals ability to cope with behavioral and physiological challenges such as exposure to humans, experimental manipulation, or environmental variation S.P.I.D.E.R • S-SETTING GOALS: • Setting goals has two key components: • Learning the natural and individual history of the species • Clearly identifying the behaviors we want to encourage or discourage through enrichment P • Planning specifically involves the creation of an enrichment plan to achieve desired behavioral goals. The enrichment initiatives should allow animals to have choice and control within their environment. The process of developing an enrichment plan helps animal care staff think through the idea and hypothesize how the animal might respond to the initiative. I • Implementing an enrichment plan is the execution of the enrichment initiative. Scheduling enrichment in a calendar like format ensures the items are available; enrichment will be provided and is an opportunity to create novel presentation methods and varied schedules by planning ahead. D • Documentation of enrichment can be accomplished in many ways. Animal care staff record when enrichment was provided in a calendar-like format initialing on the calendar when they provide enrichment and what initiative was provided. Video recording, photos, written logs, and computerized tracking programs are also excellent tools. The documentation of enrichment can provide a means of examining trends and evaluating enrichment strategies. E • Evaluation can also take many forms, but is an essential step in the process that is often overlooked. Observations, meetings, conversations, and individual evaluation of enrichment initiatives happen on a regular basis. Evaluation of trends and patterns in documentation can assist animal care staff to make decisions whether to continue with a particular strategy for the enrichment, make adjustments, or discontinue enrichment initiatives. Many times, the enrichment initiative may be utilized by the animals differently than the original intent. In some cases this may be appropriate, but unless initiatives are evaluated this information may be unknown. R • RE-ADJUSTMENT: • The re-adjustment component of the model happens throughout the process. Adjustments to enrichment plans happen regularly before providing enrichment, after evaluation of documentation, and even in the process of setting goals. To accomplish these goals, enrichment strategies should be based on an understanding of species-specific behavior and physiology Enrichment Types Types of Enrichment Social Enrichment Occupational (Cognitive) Enrichment Physical (Environment) Enrichment Sensory Enrichment Nutritional (Food-based) Enrichment Social Enrichment • Involves either direct or indirect (visual, olfactory, auditory) contact with conspecifics (other individuals of the same species) or humans Occupational (Cognitive) Enrichment • Encompasses both psychological enrichment (e.g., devices that provide animals with control or challenges) and enrichment that encourages exercise Physical (Environment) Enrichment • Involves altering the size or complexity of the animals enclosure or adding accessories to the enclosure such as objects, substrate, or permanent structure Sensory Enrichment Stimuli that are visual, auditory, or in other modalities Nutritional (Food-based) Enrichment • Involves either presenting varies or novel food types or changing the method of food delivery Cattle • Social Enrichment – If the experiment protocol dictates individual housing for cattle, visual and auditory contact with conspecifics is desirable • Humans may substitute if social contact is not possible • Gentle and confident handlers benefit animals and may result in improved milk production • Conversely, rough handling is stressful for cattle and they recognize individual people and become frightened of those who handle them aggressively • Shouting, hitting, and use of the cattle prod Cattle • Occupational Enrichment – Tied dairy cattle should have daily exercise in a yard. • Will have fewer illnesses requiring vet attention and fewer hock injuries • The cattle use this time to groom in areas of the body that they can’t reach when tied. • Loose-housed cattle increase grooming when provided a mechanical brush and will use it to reach difficult areas Cattle • Nutritional Enrichment – Weather permitting, access to a wellmanaged pasture is beneficial and recommended for all cattle • Results in fewer health problems such as mastitis • Do not exhibit stereotypic tongue rolling • Sensory Enrichment – Beef Cattle exposed to either human shouting or noise of metal clanging move more while restrained in chute. • Even more important for dairy cattle as they are more reactive to sound than beef cattle • Olfactory enrichment is important for cattle. Cattle more attracted to enrichment devices with lavender and milk scents Horses • Social Enrichment – As prey species, horses are highly motivated to interact with individuals of their own species for comfort, play, access to food and shelter resources, and as an antipredator strategy. • Restlessness, pacing and vocalizations occur and suggest experiences of acute anxiety and distress • Horses housed singly display greater aggression toward human handlers and learn new tasks slower • Confining horses for long periods may produce behavioral problems. Examples include weaving, cribbing, or wind sucking Horses • Management strategies to minimize stereotypies include • Companionship (another horse or pony, even a goat, cat, dog, or chickens) • Exercise (hand walking, lunging, or turning out into paddock) • Environmental enrichment objects (large ball, foraging device, plastic bottle hung from the ceiling, or mirror) • Increasing dietary fiber by pasture grazing Horses • Physical Enrichment – Access to paddocks or pasture so they can exercise • Results in less aggression directed towards handlers • Occupational Enrichment – Toys placed in stall which can include large durable balls, as well as home-made devices such as plastic jugs hanging on ropes Horses • Nutritional Enrichment – opportunities to forage • Providing smaller and more frequent meals throughout the day Poultry • Social Enrichment – Frequent exposure to kind and gentle care with brief periods of handling, beginning at youngest age to make later handling easy, increased feed efficiency, increased body weight and antibody responses • Occupational Enrichment – Primary method for promoting exercise are perches or other elevated areas • Egg-laying strains are highly motivated to use perches at night Poultry • Physical Enrichment – nestboxes are the most important physical enrichment for laying hens • If not provided, may show signs of agitation, pacing behavior • Substrate – the provision of suitable substrate, such as friable litter material for turkeys and fowl and both water and friable material for ducks, facilitates both foraging and grooming behavior’ • Reduces risk of feather pecking and cannibalism Poultry • Hard to treat outbreaks as they are socially transmitted behaviors so it is best to prevent their occurrence • Turkeys should be provided with straw and hanging chains to reduce pecking injuries • If appropriate, then the poultry will dust bathe in long bouts on most days • Improves feather condition by dispersing lipids removes ectoparasites Poultry • Sensory Enrichment – The effects of 3 forms of sensory enrichment (videos, odors, and music) has been researched in poultry • Both chicks and hens are attracted to video images with bright, colored, complex and moving video images • Regular exposure and odors with which chicks have been reared (vanillin) decreased fear responses • Nutritional Enrichment – Providing suitable substrate or scattering feed in the litter when birds are elsewhere Sheep and Goats • Social enrichment – validation of enrichment devices for sheep is extremely limited • If social contact is limited, visual contact with other sheep through fencing will suffice • Also, a mirror or an inanimate object covered with animal skin could serve as social surrogate • However, because sheep appear to treat their own reflection as strange individual it is also possible that mirror image could cause social stress Sheep and Goats • Nutritional Enrichment – devices that provide feed supplements when manipulated by licking or pushing with the head may occupy the animals attention • However, great care must be taken to keep these objects clean, as they quickly become contaminated with manure. • Occupational and Physical Enrichment – Wool-biting may develop if sheep are confined • Hanging chains above the surface of the pen, adding objects to the pen (ball, plastic bottles, or chewing bars), playing music, and altering the diet have been used to reduce wool biting • Climbing structures for goats – Super important Swine • Social Enrichment – Housing pigs in stable social groups with ample space to adjust their proximity to different individuals according to their social relationships and state. • If pigs must be isolated, friendly social contact from caretakers is especially important (ear scratch, pet, etc) • Artificial udder with flexible nipples can decrease distress in piglets that must be weaned at an early age Swine • Occupational Enrichment - Allowing promoting physical exercise, foraging, exploration, nest-building, playing and manipulative and cognitive activities • Access to pasture, soil, straw, hay, bark, branches and logs. Pig is able to explore, sniff, bite and chew which reduces the chances of these behaviors being directed toward the bodies of pen-mates • Long straw is the best for preventing and curing tail-biting once it has already started Swine • However, risk of tail-biting is elevated if they were reared with straw and then housed without it • When straw can’t be used, hanging rope with unraveled ends Swine • Physical Enrichment – providing visual barriers help pigs to avoid aggressive pen-mates • Bedding • Sensory Enrichment – enrichment materials with noticeable odor attract exploration • Nutritional Enrichment – Incorporating a nutritional reward in a chewable object increases its attractiveness Let’s Learn About the Zoo • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gbe6tCqc1k
