Grant Emily P, Wickham Sarah L, Anderson Fiona, Barnes Anne L, Fleming Patricia A, Miller David W
Agricultural Sciences, College of Science, Health, Engineering & Education, Murdoch University, Murdoch WA 6150, Australia.
Cooperative Research Centre for Sheep Industry Innovation (Sheep CRC), Armidale NSW 2350, Australia.
Animals (Basel). 2020 Jul 7;10(7):1148. doi: 10.3390/ani10071148.
The identification and assessment of pain in sheep under field conditions are important, but, due to their stoic nature, are fraught with many challenges. In Australia, various husbandry procedures that are documented to cause pain are routinely performed at lamb marking, including ear tagging, castration, mulesing, and tail docking. This study evaluated the validity of a novel methodology to assess pain in lambs: qualitative behavioural assessment (QBA) was used to compare the behavioural expression of control lambs (CONTROL) with that of lambs subject to these procedures that received either a saline placebo 15 min before procedures (PLACEBO), or were administered meloxicam 15 min before procedures in addition to the standard analgesic Tri-Solfen at the time of procedures, as per the manufacturer's recommendations (ANALGESIC TREATMENT; AT). In terms of behavioural expression, it was expected that: CONTROL ≠ PLACEBO, AT = CONTROL, and PLACEBO ≠ AT. Video footage of the 6-8-week-old lambs ( = 10 for each treatment) was captured approximately 1.5 h postprocedure and was presented, in a random order, to 19 observers for assessment using the Free-Choice Profiling (FCP) approach to QBA. There was significant consensus ( < 0.001) among the observers in their assessment of the lambs, with two main dimensions of behavioural expression explaining 69.2% of the variation. As expected, observers perceived differences in the demeanour of lambs in the first dimension, scoring all lambs subject to the routine husbandry procedures as significantly more 'dull' and 'uneasy' compared to the control lambs ( < 0.05). Contrary to expectations, the results also suggested that analgesic treatment did not provide relief at the time of observation. Further investigations to validate the relationship between behavioural expression scores and pain are necessary, but these results suggest that painful husbandry procedures alter the behavioural expression of lambs and these differences can be captured using QBA methodology.
在野外条件下识别和评估绵羊的疼痛很重要，但由于它们坚忍的天性，这充满了许多挑战。在澳大利亚，有记录表明会导致疼痛的各种饲养程序在给羔羊打标记时经常进行，包括耳部打标、阉割、剪羊毛和断尾。本研究评估了一种评估羔羊疼痛的新方法的有效性：采用定性行为评估（QBA）将对照羔羊（CONTROL）的行为表现与接受这些程序的羔羊的行为表现进行比较，这些羔羊在程序前15分钟接受生理盐水安慰剂（PLACEBO），或者按照制造商的建议在程序前15分钟给予美洛昔康，同时在程序时给予标准镇痛药三索尔芬（ANALGESIC TREATMENT；AT）。就行为表现而言，预期为：CONTROL≠PLACEBO，AT = CONTROL，且PLACEBO≠AT。在程序后约1.5小时拍摄了6 - 8周龄羔羊（每种处理n = 10）的视频片段，并以随机顺序呈现给19名观察者，使用QBA的自由选择剖析（FCP）方法进行评估。观察者在对羔羊的评估中达成了显著共识（P < 0.001），行为表现的两个主要维度解释了69.2%的变异。正如预期的那样，观察者在第一个维度上察觉到羔羊行为的差异，将所有接受常规饲养程序的羔羊评为比对照羔羊明显更“迟钝”和“不安”（P < 0.05）。与预期相反，结果还表明镇痛治疗在观察时并未提供缓解。有必要进行进一步调查以验证行为表现评分与疼痛之间的关系，但这些结果表明，痛苦的饲养程序会改变羔羊的行为表现，并且这些差异可以使用QBA方法来捕捉。
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