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Fabio Napolitano presents Poster 47 during the poster sessions in the Aula.
Session theme 5: Development and improvement of welfare assessment protocols
119
Poster 47
INTER-OBSERVER RELIABILITY OF CLINICAL SCORING AND
AVOIDANCE DISTANCE IN BUFFALOES
F. Napolitano 1 , F. Grasso 2 , A. Bilancione 2 , G. Migliori 2 , M. Spadetta 2 , C. Winckler 3 , G. De
Rosa 2
1 DISPA, Università degli Studi della Basilicata, Italy
2 DISSPAPA, Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”, Italy
3 Division of Livestock Sciences/Department of Sustainable Agricultural Systems - University of Natural
Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU), Austria
In order to develop a welfare monitoring system specific to dairy buffalo within the Welfare
Quality® project the inter-observer reliability of some animal related variables was studied. The
selection of the variables was mainly based on what has been proposed for dairy cattle in the same
project with appropriate adaptation to the peculiar needs of buffalo.
The research was carried out on 42 loose-housed buffalo farms located in central-southern Italy.
The number of lactating buffaloes ranged from 30 to 230. A total number of ∼1700 animals was
observed. Observations were at the same time but independently performed by two observers. For
each farm and each observer the median value of the avoidance distance at manger was computed,
whereas for clinical scoring the prevalence of each variable was used. Inter-observer reliability was
computed using the Spearman correlation (rs).
Avoidance distance at manger (median value =0.25m), evaluated by an assessor walking (1 step/s)
toward each animal until signs of withdrawal, showed a high coefficient of correlation (rs=0.91;
p