Unsal Ganimet, Johnson Kate F, Stergiadis Sokratis, Bennett Richard, Barker Zoe E
School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6EU, UK.
Anim Welf. 2025 Jun 13;34:e37. doi: 10.1017/awf.2025.28. eCollection 2025.
This systematic review aims to evaluate the effectiveness of various physical environmental enrichment items such as brushes, ropes, teats, chains, balls, cowhides/blocks, at improving the welfare of indoor-housed calves, heifers, and cattle. This review of 33 peer-reviewed papers and one industry report evaluated different welfare-related outcomes following physical environmental enrichment, including feed intake, lying time, play and exploratory behaviour, aggression, stereotypic behaviour and cross-sucking behaviour. The results of the meta-analysis revealed that calves and heifers enrolled in experimental studies using enrichment items had significantly improved growth rates, and increased locomotor play, but the overall reduction in cross-sucking behaviour was small and non-significant. The effect of enrichment on feed intake, aggression/stereotypic behaviour, play behaviour, cleanliness score contrasted between studies, with some reporting improvements while others showed no effect of environmental enrichment in these parameters. The risk of bias assessment revealed limitations in researcher blinding, sequence generation, and allocation concealment across the literature assessing the effectiveness of environmental enrichment on animal welfare. Overall, this review underscores the significant positive impact of physical enrichment on the welfare and behaviour of indoor-housed cattle, while highlighting the need for further research to optimise enrichment strategies across different cattle age groups and housing conditions.
本系统评价旨在评估刷子、绳索、奶嘴、链条、球、牛皮/木块等各种物理环境丰富物品对改善室内饲养犊牛、小母牛和牛福利的有效性。这篇对33篇同行评审论文和一份行业报告的综述评估了物理环境丰富后不同的与福利相关的结果，包括采食量、躺卧时间、玩耍和探索行为、攻击行为、刻板行为和交叉吮乳行为。荟萃分析结果显示，参与使用丰富物品的实验研究的犊牛和小母牛生长率显著提高，运动性玩耍增加，但交叉吮乳行为的总体减少幅度较小且不显著。不同研究中，丰富对采食量、攻击/刻板行为、玩耍行为、清洁度评分的影响存在差异，一些研究报告有改善，而另一些研究则表明环境丰富对这些参数没有影响。偏倚风险评估揭示了在评估环境丰富对动物福利有效性的文献中，研究人员盲法、序列生成和分配隐藏方面存在局限性。总体而言，本综述强调了物理丰富对室内饲养牛的福利和行为的显著积极影响，同时强调需要进一步研究以优化不同牛年龄组和饲养条件下的丰富策略。
