Applying wildlife welfare principles to individual animals

7.4 Using wild deer as an example
The terms of reference for this report suggest that in offering detail, the report should focus
on deer as a worked example. In this analysis therefore, what specific indicators might be
used to assess the welfare status of an individual (or group) of deer? While accepting that
prolonged observation of any individual wild deer is unlikely we would still advocate the use
of behavioural cues where possible, including the identification of clearly appropriate and
adaptive behaviour (or lack of appropriate response in given circumstances); the expression
of appropriate appetitive behaviour - where an animal can be seen to be searching for the
appropriate resources to address some perceived deficiency (seeking shelter from wind or
adverse weather conditions; moving appropriately to woodland cover or to more sheltered
feeding grounds etc.).
Observation should also reveal lack of expected behaviour (even when opportunity to
express that behaviour may be present) and also any clearly inappropriate or atypical
behaviours (such as an individual separated at some distance from an obvious social group;
animal clearly being rejected or shunned by others within the group; an animal in poor
condition suffering continual displacement etc.).
In the absence of an opportunity to record such behaviour, assessment inevitably has to rely
on more physiological measures such as physical condition scores (e.g. Riney, 1955, 1960
for red deer) which may be applied to scoring live animals at some distance, or condition
recorded from lardered carcases (body weight, kidney fat, parasite burden; Putman, 2005)
although these latter measures inevitably record only average condition of the wider
population.
Similar, species-specific cues based on observation of normal or more aberrant behaviour
could doubtless be developed for other wildlife species.
18