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Susanne Waiblinger presents Poster 25 during the poster sessions in the Aula.
Session theme 2: Assessing emotional state and human-animal relations
DEVELOPMENT OF TESTS FOR ASSESSING DAIRY GOATS’
RELATIONSHIP TO HUMANS
S. Waiblinger, C. Graml, M. Knosp
Institute of Animal Husbandry and Welfare, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria
97
Poster 25
Animals’ relationships with humans have considerable impact on welfare. We aimed at developing
feasible, reliable and valid tests assessing the relationship of the animals to humans in dairy goat
herds based on tests used in other species. Short-term repeatability and feasibility of three tests were
investigated as well as inter-test correlations as first information on validity.
10 farms with herd size of 48–165 dairy goats were visited on two consecutive days. Reactions of
the goats towards an unknown experimenter were recorded on both days in three tests: test with a
stationary person (approach-test – APP: experimenter stands motionless for 15 min), and two tests
with a moving person (AVOIDF: Avoidance distance at the feeding place; AVOIDB: Avoidance
distance in the barn). Tests were performed in late morning, after the experimenter and another
unknown person had been in the barn already for two hours recording social behaviour to avoid
strong neophobic reactions of the goats. Spearman rank correlations coefficients were calculated
(n=10).
Moderate to high repeatability was found for the tests. In APP the number of animals approaching
within arm length of the experimenter showed very high repeatability (rs =0.90; p=0.005), the
latency for the first goat to approached until touching correlated highly between days (rs =0.71;
p=0.02), as did the median of AVOIDF (rs =0.79; p=0.006). The median of AVOIDB as well as the
number of animals that could be touched in AVOIDF and AVOIDB correlated moderately (rs =0.65
to 0.66; p=0.04). The tests inter-correlated moderately to highly (rs=0.68 to 0.71, p=0.03 to 0.02).
Regarding feasibility, AVOIDF was sometimes hard to perform due to the constructional situation
or high amounts of feed stored in this area. The other two tests were feasible on all of the farms.
In summary, all tests are promising due to good repeatability as well as convergent validity but this
accounts especially for APP. However, on some farms AVOIDF may not be practicable. Further
evaluations of validity and reliability are necessary.
Contact information: Susanne Waiblinger or email Susanne.Waiblinger@vu-wien.ac.at
Complete address: University of Veterinary Medicine, Veterinärplatz 1, 1210 Vienna, Austria
Species: Goat