Using behaviour to understand and assess welfare in cattle

Animals show behavioural responses to their environments based on the integration of their underlying emotional, cognitive and motivational processes, with the ultimate goal of fulfilling needs that promote survival. Attempts to improve welfare involve understanding these needs and the factors affecting them. Assessing behaviour is one of the major methods that can be used to improve welfare. This chapter discusses the different methods to use animal behaviour to investigate welfare in cattle. The two main methods are direct observations of spontaneous behaviour and behavioural tests. Observations of spontaneous behaviour capture the undisturbed behaviour of cattle in their ‘home’ surroundings. This can be used to document the natural or ‘baseline’ patterns of behaviour. Behavioural tests typically require placing an animal in an experimental pen with stimuli or resources that we want to understand the animal’s response to. Behavioural tests allow us to investigate animal preference, motivation and emotional responses in more depth. Welfare assessment protocols often include behavioural indicators of positive and negative welfare but are typically observations of ongoing behaviour rather than behavioural tests. Finally, this chapter will examine what behavioural assessments cannot tell us and where further developments in this science are necessary.