Measurements of Animal Behavior and Welfare As Related to Animal Growth and Performance

An individual animal’s well-being is influenced by and/or related to every event and aspect of the animal’s life from conception to death. Thus, every animal science sub-discipline (nutrition, genetics, etc.) contributes to understanding welfare. While an animal’s behavior is a major component of both optimal production performance and good welfare, behavior as an established discipline continues to have fits and starts; in part, because behavior includes subjective states such as feelings, consciousness, etc. But behavior can also be motility which can be readily measured and shown to be highly correlated to growth, fat deposition, etc. Behavior as a component of care and husbandry is often accounted for in management decisions without the science-based reason being overtly recognized. For example beef and dairy heifers are typically managed separately, and from the viewpoint of behavior, this is an acknowledgement of the importance of social behavior, i.e., when mixed the larger, older, and more socially dominant cows can control access of the heifers to feed thus lowering herd performance. In feedlot cattle, the correlation between rate of gain and social rank is generally low as a consequence of proper pen design, bunk space, etc. being sufficient to overcome the potentially negative influence of social dominance. Relative to welfare, quantitative measures of individual animal growth and performance should be included when evaluating animal care programs. A sudden decrease in growth rate, milk yield, calving rate, etc. can be indicative of health or nutritional factors that have a concomitant state of poor well-being. However, very high levels of performance may not always be associated with positive well-being. For example, high levels of milk production can be associated with factors (mastitis, rebreeding, etc.) that arguably are related to negative well-being. Ultimately, at least from the public’s perspective, animal welfare has to do with how animals ought to be treated. Science traditionally has tended to avoid directly dictating answers to issues having to do with ought and should. Thus, addressing animal welfare presents certain challenges to animal scientists. A contention is presented that good welfare has to do with doing the right thing, and the right thing to do is that which has the best reasons for doing. Thus, welfare is a combination of ethics and science, and its assessment includes both quantitative and qualitative aspects. Specifically, if welfare is doing that which has the best reasons, appropriate welfare is ethically based and not in conflict with science.